
Priestess & Hierophant
Purveyor
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"There is a lot to discover in Darkly Told. It doesn’t offer immediate answers, nor is it meant to do so, but it will repay careful listening. Hopefully, this chapbook will be successful enough to prompt Alicia Cole to make a few more. Fans are better off for its appearance." - Dead Reckonings No. 18
On reading the fact of the day
By Meg Freer
If polar bears can sniff prey
from 16 kilometres away,
best return home when you lie
on the grass and its blades
bite back, stipple the surface
of the day with regret. Or wait
with false alertness until the edge
disappears, your mouth roofless.
Let the wind blow until the lost
pieces of the afternoon take
you with them to remind you
that mother said, “Hope is faintly
alive yet unknown disaster
may be in the wind.” Are these
days the nadir of your existence?
Mirror blessed with memory,
you are a time loop, polar ice caps
are melting, and polar bears approach.
Meg Freer grew up in Missoula, Montana. She teaches piano in Ontario, enjoys running and photography, and wishes she had more time for writing poetry. Her photos and poems have won awards in North America and overseas and have been published in chapbook anthologies and journals such as NatureWriting, Mothers Always Write, Young Ravens Literary Review, Eastern Iowa Review, and Rat’s Ass Review. In 2017 she won a writing fellowship and attended the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.
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