Originally from Ontario, Canada, Loren Walker is a Pushcart Prize nominee; her poems have appeared in Hive Avenue Literary Journal, Levee Magazine, QU Journal, the West Texas Literary Review, and Sugared Water, among other publications. Prior to neverheart, she self-published two chapbooks, dislocation and strong-water, and several micro-chapbooks. Loren is also the author of award-winning fantasy and science-fiction novels, a linocut printmaker, and embroidery artist. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
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hands like slow birds.
For my self-preservation, shutter-eyes only;
blink, blink, to capture every angle exact.
My hands, so gunslinger nervous.
Open fingers; shut into fists, close around pencils,
and awaken her instead in paper margins, compartmentalized:
comet hair; sugar violet eyes; tulip face; hands like slow birds.
I fixate on every profile; every bitten lip; the curve of her back
when she laughs; and how my heart is folding, and how I allow it,
for the first time ever, while gripping hard the part that
that longs to wrap around, to feel her sigh against mine.