A life-long resident of central Pennsylvania’s ridge-and-valley region, Abby Minor is the daughter of Appalachian tinkerers and Jewish New Yorkers. She’s worked as a pre-school teacher, roadie, assistant wedding-cake baker, landscaper, university writing teacher, seamstress, etc. Her poems have appeared in CALYX, So to Speak, Slush Pile Magazine, and The Fourth River; she’s an alumna of The Rensing Center’s Artist in Residence Program, a graduate of the MFA Program at Penn State, and one half of the noise music performance duo Wildflower Swagger. Since 2012 she has directed Being Heard, a creative writing program that honors the voices and imaginations of her county’s elders.
JULY WITH MISOPROSTOL & WOMAN SPEAKING IN
MID-MORNING SUN
“Morning and it’s” “not a not” “curtains & purpose” “& goodness” “A lace-
work” “in the early” “Center of thought” “Color of color of, color. Color
of love” “Nearly mauve” “no not” “& it’s mild” “Nearly a lace-work”
“lace of inside” “Inside” “inside of light” “color from inside” “Only
inside here” “nowhere else ever” “& goodness & purpose” “& pleasure”
“being alone with roses” “any number of roses” “days of rose” “I know
who I say” “Receiver, speak to me & others” “all I make is” “common & old”
“I make all as” “russet, nearly color” “edge of rose” “Not a word,
I know who I say” “who I center” “nowhere else ever” “less, ever” “I
became” “I did what I” “what I became” “Color of morning” “color of others”
“what I say” “cotton strips to” “gather” “to remain” “Here” “to remain—
one” “less the same” “In thornless center” “my aim & ever” “now I lay”
“my own” “lay my own” “go away” (“it changes you” “to go away”) “In
morning & in” “a small town &” “A curtain, here I lay” “At this time” “Here”
“At this time” (“why” “am I arguing?”) “Is this” “my dark matter” “is this”
“my rose light?” “More & more,” “I exist.” “In” “my self-meadow there”
“are many curtains, many” “grasses,” “a mass of foam, and dress” “of rose”
“In my self-meadow, be” “with me,” “be with me & lay” “with me” “to
be me” “Reader, there is no” “distance” “there is only” “color, undoing,”
I do not stand” “for absence, I” “lay my own” “to give my self to you.”