Emily Van Kley

Dear

Runner-up for the 2023 American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Judged by Brian Czyzyk

Here is the cloud-addled sky,
its long face dripping—

the green backyard
clutched in sun-snake & shadow.

I’ve lined the path
with spring-wrecked

tulips, their blooms unfleshed
to tatters.

This is a test.

Beautiful things end—
a phenomenon so natural
it’s wrenching.

In the window, a prism
cracks apart the insubstantial,

which is what time is like:
its dreadful passing,

its thrift,
which sharpens us specific.

Sweet androgyne, I hope
I see you rightly. Hand me

a sword fern—I’ll defend you.

I’ll weave us a bed
of spiderweb & lichen; I’ll ruffle

my mouth against your cockle-
shell ear. The evening

hummingbird with her tongue
sunk in the crocosmia’s

slender needs no sense

of smell to build a neural
map of every flower
that’s fed her.

Against the sun, a hummingbird
becomes a prism,

which is another way of saying

I love the low blouse
slipping down your shoulder,

the light that sighs
between your breasts,
all the bright your skin

is brown with being.

Sometimes we recognize
a stranger’s gaze

because they are about to become
familiar. Which is another way

of saying squint
and the birdcage blurs,

darling. My fingers lose
themselves in your curls, and oh

your mouth is just the beginning.

Emily Van Kley is a queer poet and circus artist currently based in Olympia, Washington. She is the author of Arrhythmia (2022) and The Cold and the Rust (2018, Winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize), both from Persea Books. Her poetry has received the Loraine Williams Prize for Poetry, the Iowa Review Award, the Florida Review Editor’s Award, and has been featured in editions of Best American Poetry and Best New Poets. Originally from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Emily holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University and has been awarded fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. When not writing, she can often be found teaching or performing aerial acrobatics.