Nina Pick is a founding editor of Mount Vision Press and an editor of the Inverness Almanac. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as The Bombay Gin, Tule Review, Arion, Stone Canoe, and ISLE, online as part of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, and in various anthologies. Her poem "Ticket for the Journey Home" was recently a finalist for the 2015 Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, and a BA with a concentration in Comparative Literature from NYU.from À Luz
Is it reward, or penalty, to live
in the body? Like this:
when I go down, there is a field
and an edge to the field
and a fire burning on the
threshold, and beyond it
woods, where the animals
race down the path
through the trees, and finally
galloping through
the flames, stallion, elk, stag,
each hooved or cleft-hooved
creature, eyes wide
and maddened, leaping
through the live pyre
at the gate, and in their
burning, their smoldering
tails and singed fetlocks, they
arrive. Come, stand here, by me,
in the mist of juniper, sage-grass, in
the blue-green scent of the
burning world, at last
resounding: how does it sound, the echo
of the crackle
of its yellow branches?