We are pleased to offer our Poets Read series in honor of National Poetry Month 2019 and will run it throughout the month of April.
Every day in April, our website and our YouTube channel will feature the voice of a poet whose work has appeared in our pages over the past year. On Sundays, we will offer two poets for your enjoyment.
Today’s poem is Measuring the Volume of My Absence by Elya Braden and it appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of Gyroscope Review.
Measuring the Volume of My Absence
by Elya Braden
It’s cool here under the earth,
darkness blessing the stars.
I am coal crushed into diamonds.
Dusk now the doorway
to my satisfaction. Between lake
and garden, stage lights beckon.
Earthworms unravel after a storm;
death, in heels, sudden and concrete.
I am changing faster
than a sequence of locks,
stairs and sand.
The compass spins, True North spreading
in Puget Sound, each wave:
Surrender, love, surrender.
I empty the stones
from my pockets,
swallow the moon.
About the Poet: Elya Braden took a long detour from her creative endeavours to pursue an eighteen-year career as a corporate lawyer and entrepreneur. She is now a writer and collage artist living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in Algebra of Owls, Forge, Gyroscope Review, The Main Street Rag, The Chiron Review, Willow Review and elsewhere. You can find her online at www.elyabraden.com.