Cymelle Leah Edwards (she/her) is a Pushcart Prize nominee from Flagstaff, AZ. Her work has been published in Elm Leaves Journal, Contra Viento, and Ghost City Review and has been honored with the Diana Gabaldon Creative Writing Award. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. Edwards also serves as a board member for the Northern Arizona Book Festival and editor at Kelp Journal.
You
spits loose mist onto dizzy panorama
of blackland prairie,
rolling sycamores thumbed to sky—
indian paintbrush texture maps lines of
carraba-yellow canisters stretched across the plain,
songbirds swallow alkaline clay,
carry monarchs to their nests and genuflect
the air that moves between bone,
a reservoir for seismic echoes—
when you stroke the membrane of rosehill
it hews and turns to meadow.