by Alicia Rebecca Myers

This morning I watched a robin convert a pothole into a bird bath, which is
the kind of fearless ingenuity I covet. I ask myself why Rothko listened to
his doctor when advised not to paint color blocks higher than a yard
because of his heart ailment. Did acrylic on paper suddenly convey more
intimate spiritual planes? I don’t know enough about art or spiritual planes
to say, although one time, at the Dalí museum in Figueres, I stood on my head
in front of the wall-size rendering of Gala and made the roots branching
down from her bare chest spring skyward. There is a lockstep to daily life
that can be subverted: the huzzah! of reconfiguring the pattern, of houndstooth
disrupted by gingham to create an intermediate state. On 34B, the sign for the bar
that is also a trailer reads Cans & Clams or Cans & or & Clams, depending on
availability, and I love that, the not knowing, the big marquee, the shifting
language, the discovery made possible every drive.

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Most recently, Alicia Rebecca Myers' poem "Winter Solstice" was selected by Kaveh Akbar for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021, and she was a finalist for the 2022 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. Her writing has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Threadcount, FIELD, and The Rumpus. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium (Brain Mill Press), was winner of the inaugural Mineral Point Chapbook Series. She enjoys open water swimming, karaoke, and fostering puppies.