When a beloved dies,
we gather like elephants
to mourn the bones
touching each foot
ankle, femur, rib,
vertebrae, shoulder,
stroking the pelvis,
jaw, cranium, moving
each one separately
with our trunk-fingers
as if by memorizing
and lifting each one
we could reanimate
body, spirit, self.
Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s poetry has been published Writers Resist, One (Jacar Press), Phoenix Rising Review, Gold Man Review, Orbis International Poetry Quarterly, Cargo Literary, Spectrum and a number of other small presses and anthologies. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and received honorable mentions in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest and the Writer’s Digest poetry awards. Called ‘a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,’ her first book, ‘Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos,’ was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press.
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