One of our own here at The Gloria Sirens blog collective is making us super-proud today! The marvelous poet Katie Riegel is a nominee for a Best of the Net literary award. The poem nominated is the gorgeous “Spirit Animals” which appeared this past year in the journal Escape into Life. Read the poem below,and a few other of Katie’s wonders here. And GO, KATIE. We are chanting for you!
Spirit Animals
My brother tells me he’s going
to the doctor; he gets teary too easily
now. There must be something wrong
that will show up in the blood.
I don’t tell him I think tears are primordial,
they’re mammoths and cave bears and pterodactyls,
they’re better than private jets
and all the cars on I-75, they’re our goddamn right.
He’s a straight man and a firefighter.
I don’t tell him what’s been broken over all these years
fills up the ponds behind our hearts.
It happens slowly:
a dropped glass, a lost book.
Bicycles. Old apartments with their clever
mice. Trains, still hooting plaintively.
Even a feather now
and the water overflows. It has to.
Yeah—all that rusty junk
makes each of us a back yard in the rural
everywhere of America. Brother,
we’re here now. Brother, everything
shows in our blood.
Categories: Katie's Voice, Shameless Promotion
The Gloria Sirens 
Holy S. What an incredible, incredible poem. Katie…you freaking rock.
LikeLike
Lovely! the right poem for a stormy day!
LikeLike
Wow, that was good.
LikeLike