Stefanie Kirby
A daughter pops arils into floral
stains. Elsewhere: leftover
pips solid as teeth, fruit lips
curled back in decay. A mouth
packed with loss. To be this apathy
of seeds, left behind, motherlike.
A silo offers feed to pass
as comfort: an emptying body,
frost-blistered, spilling grain.
Stefanie Kirby lives and writes along Colorado’s Front Range. Her debut chapbook, Fruitful, is the winner of the 2023 Adrift Chapbook Contest, forthcoming from Driftwood Press. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, and appear in West Branch, The Massachusetts Review, The Maine Review, The Cincinnati Review, SAND, Cola Literary Review, and elsewhere.
Artwork: “Temptation” by Peyton Fultz
Acrylic