Carolyn Oliver, “Salt Marsh”

E.E. Cummings Prize, selected by C. Prudence Arceneaux

Salt Marsh

sun some bloody 
                               yolk leaking
 
when we wreck 
                               on the marsh
 
the blue cows 
                               perjure themselves
 
reeds scintillate 
                               shatter light against 
 
low clouds grainy 
                               insides of pears
 
seeded with night 
                               & if you hunger too
 
darling cover me 
                               like a cathedral
 
make me a new 
                               sky paint me in
 
stars curled over 
                               my vaulted arches
 
& in every corner 
                               I will hold you

Carolyn Oliver’s debut collection, Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble, won the Agha Shahid Ali Prize and will be published in 2022 by the University of Utah Press. Carolyn is the editor of The Worcester Review. 
Online: carolynoliver.net