Sample Content

Claudia Emerson
Pond Turtle

You want to feed it; we both do. We have
come to know it well by its trailing veil
of air purling the water. This doesn’t school,
and fish scatter before it. The heavy
body just beneath the surface, it moves
the way your eye moves beneath its translucent
lid of dream. All is defense: the mud-
covered shell, the ragged blade of the mouth,

the head thicker than your clenched fist. Breaking
through my reflection, it displaces me as it feeds
on what we have cast here. It takes no pleasure
I can see; that is for us. Instead, it suffers our care
for it—and is perhaps relieved when the bread
is gone and when we can no longer see the breathing.

READ MORE FROM THIS ISSUE