by Heidi Seaborn

~inspired by Natasha Trethewey’s “Elegy”



where rivers slough beneath the bank,
round the stones, eddy in the slow run
home—

an alluvial fan of sediment and sentiment.
My mother needed to say goodbye
to the rivers—Bitterroot, Yellowstone,

Flathead, Blackfoot, Bighorn, Gallatin—
where her fly once teased the brown and cutthroat,
once cast into the light of my father.

Morning mist sifting off the meadows
like steam rising from the coffee brewed
over their camp stove.

Wading hip-deep in the currents,
their lines whipping through the weather—
whatever that day offered.

Catching a silver glimmer then
releasing, as if each fish was a child
held for the instant.

If I was there, it was as a trout—
a fluorescence in motion. The stream
coursing, coursing past.

A river seeks weakness, the unrooted—

My mother had brought her fly rods,
renewed her license. But the rivers
were thick with memory and she is an old

river—resisting, then changing
direction.

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Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She’s the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. She has recent work in Agni, Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Financial Times of London, Poetry Northwest, Plume, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Heidi holds degrees from Stanford and NYU. See heidiseabornpoet.com.

by Heidi Seaborn

You have bought the wrong light bulbs again—
too bright this time. This time you brought
the receipt but first you travel the well-lit aisle
of lighting fixtures. There’s a notice about a ban
on fluorescence which reminds you
of Ben’s offer for a bioluminescence
paddle in the Salish Sea. You want that—
to glide out into a wash of light, stars and sea
bedazzled. But here in the West Seattle True Value,
you are confused by wattage, the question
of dimming and LED. How many hours
of light should you expect? The time changed
this week and you hustle home to walk the dog
before nightfall, his vision dimming with age.
In the dark, he runs into lamp posts even as
they cast a glow and as the neighbors’ televisions pulse
a spectrum of the evening news, the wars brightening
their big screens. You can see into their living
rooms—in a way you never do
during the long summer evenings when you wave
to one another, stop to chat about the weather.
Walking the dog in the gloaming, you feel
an unexpected tenderness for your neighbors,
a desire to enter their darkened rooms and sit
beside them watching the televised world.
Maybe you would be silent together.
Or perhaps, someone would turn on a light,
offer a glass of wine. You want that—
to be a reason for light.

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Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and winner of the 2022 The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize in Poetry. She is the author of three award-winning books/chapbooks of poetry: An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, Give a Girl Chaos, and Bite Marks. Recent work in Blackbird, Brevity, Copper Nickel, diode, Financial Times of London, Penn Review, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Plume, Rattle, and elsewhere. Heidi holds an MFA from NYU.

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NB: Click on the title to open a page which contains an audio version of today’s poem.

by Heidi Seaborn

At a wine bar, the sommelier queries
Do you want body or complexity?
I hesitate, weighing this choice.
My body craves complexity, again.

I have simplified my life: I write. I love.
Each with the clarity of a city skyline
seen from a distance after a rainstorm.
My muddied boots neatly stashed.

Long ago, when I first joined Facebook,
I checked the relationship option: It’s Complicated.
Having found myself caught like a lazy
housefly in my own intricate web.

I’m out with younger poets. I try to parse
the complex syntax of their lives—
familiar yet foreign. Like returning to a city
after decades or encountering

a former lover and remembering only
the language of his tongue on your skin.
Perhaps the body can hold only
so much memory. My mouth cradles

words of advice. How easy to clarify
butter, reduce sauce with experience.
Tazzelenghe, the sommelier says, pouring
the red wine, it means cut the tongue.

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Heidi Seaborn is author of the PANK Poetry Prize-winning An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe, the acclaimed debut Give a Girl Chaos and Comstock Chapbook Award-winning Bite Marks, as well as the chapbooks Once a Diva and Finding My Way Home. Her recent work in Beloit Poetry Journal, Brevity, Copper Nickel, Cortland Review, Diode, Financial Times of London, Missouri Review, The Offing, Penn Review, Pleiades, The Slowdown and the Washington Post. Heidi is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and holds an MFA from NYU. See heidiseabornpoet.com.

by Heidi Seaborn

~Beverly Hills Hotel, December 1958


Outside, hibiscus blooms
the color of raspberries.

We made her in this bungalow.
Tiny pink-throated hummingbird.

The doctor wore pink, I think.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”
The playwright writes the line.

It is dialogue; and I say, “Yes dear,
tea with bread and jam please.”

Then I remember jam spread
on the bedsheets.

In the cold of morning
I’ve held a hummingbird

like an egg, wings stilled.

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Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and author of [PANK] Book Award winner An Insomniac’s Slumber Party with Marilyn Monroe (2021), Give a Girl Chaos (2019), and the 2020 Comstock Prize Chapbook, Bite Marks. Recent work appears in American Poetry Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, SWWIM Every Day, The Cortland Review, The Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, The Slowdown with Tracy K. Smith, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU. See www.heidiseabornpoet.com.

by Heidi Seaborn

O fat
and dumb
and white—

O precious tickets
to a carnival.
Cotton candy.
Disneyland Matterhorn
roller coaster.

O show stealers—
main stage act,
I’m your back-up singer.

O tricksters—
how dare you
pretend
to guard a heart.

*This poem was a Finalist in the SWWIM For-the-Fun-of-It Contest.

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Heidi Seaborn is Executive Editor of The Adroit Journal and author of the award-winning debut collection Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press/Mastodon Books, 2019) and two chapbooks. Since Heidi returned to writing in 2016, she’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies such as American Poetry Journal, Frontier, Greensboro Review, The Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Penn Review and as the daily poem in The Slowdown and SWWIM. She holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU. www.heidiseabornpoet.com

by Heidi Seaborn

            ~with a nod to Lucille Clifton, Anne Sexton, and Sharon Olds 


The poet calls you estrogen kitchen.
But I call you galley.

Another christens you graceful lyre.
Liar. I call you liar.

A third poet calls you her sweet weight.
Wait, I call you. Wait.

Hold this sweet thing, please. Just wait
a minute. Just wait.

She names you soil of the fields,
says, “Welcome roots.” I say

rotting compost, fallopian stone.
Keep your bloody promise: anchor

my creation in your muddy
harbor. Let it moor for the winter.

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Heidi Seaborn is Editorial Director of The Adroit Journal and author of the debut collection Give a Girl Chaos (C&R Press/Mastodon Books, 2019) and the chapbook Finding My Way Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Since Heidi started writing in 2016, she’s won or been shortlisted for over two dozen awards and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies such as The Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Penn Review, and Tar River. She’s currently an NYU MFA candidate.