Olivia Ivings By Olivia Ivings
The dark stills beneath a wafer of moon.
House lights switch off, and the fence line reveals
a shaky glimmer of light. A barn owl studs a limb
on a contorted live oak—green moss climbs
the trunk, and Spanish cascades
from the branches. A woman is sipping peach Nehi
on the hood of her car beneath them and watches
a star on the horizon slip
into monkey grass, blurring the Hydra
in a haze of exhaust. A plane pushes smoke across the sky.
While she counts the dead ants, tree resin glues to her hands—
though she rubs them trying to loosen it,
the resin takes what it wants: leaves, flesh.
The tree may be dying, but it has dispersed so many seeds—
few have sprouted, but many became shit.
Even as a corpse, a tree is useful for beetles
and turkey tail. Even when it softens
to humus, Earth will still orbit the Sun.
Grit camps in the corners of her lips;
cicadas’ screams glaze the night.
Petrified wood looks like rock; a stump can siphon
nutrients from other roots, like a leech.
The moment stays like an unpaid debt.
An armadillo begins its forage.
Olivia Ivings lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, FOLIO, and Bellevue Literary Review, among others.
Why we chose this piece: This poem oozes atmosphere, and we love being in the thick of it. The imagery is so, so vivid, and we love how Olivia plays with diction (e.g., the sibilance and Z sounds in “cicadas’ screams”). And the ending! Seemingly random yet not random at all.
