Rebecca Givens Rolland is the author of The Wreck of Birds (Bauhan Publishing) and the chapbook On the Refusal to Speak (dancing girl press). She won the 2011 Dana Award in Short Fiction, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Kenyon Review, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, Many Mountains Moving, Versal, American Letters & Commentary, and Meridian. She currently lives in Boston.
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Liquids “create indeterminate forms at the surface… that are never absolutes”
How can distance increase, entice hundreds of miles? More the girl chases, more messages face backward, till she’s left only
militancy, marching-music, wind. Sputtering, she knocks breath’s buttons: jackets thread stitches, spin hooks. Itinerant, pooled glass transmits message; what about the ever-counting child? Scholar might teethe
self from trouble, yet ruin mud-spilled fields. To speak, she raps throat, clears borders: mouth swooning (cautious, inked)
she dives. Bad weather at least offers solace: clouds,
cumulus, flattened, press workhorse, then
good shepherd, on her tongue—