Julia Bouwsma

Premonition

Imagine like horses you can scent death months
before it comes—the rotting cedar and smoky drought

of it acid and prickly on your tongue. The air around you
hums, electric with silence. The sun is crumbling

off the hills. Fear unfurls its snake-spit flinch
along your legs, rattles you new each night until

your dreams stitch you to the mattress, belly down
the bruised fabric, your body taut and thin, a pulled sheet.

Out in the back of the pickup, the old ghost stories
are gnawing bread, their invisible teeth strip and crumble

each brittle bite. Tossed matches gutter the road—murky
secrets of oil slick and ice. You are learning to walk naked,

numb, winter caught in your hair, unbuckling. The stars
vibrate for miles, but each morning the wind subsides,

a last breath that is never the last. Everywhere
you look, the staggered branches glitter with disease.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, freelance editor, critic and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). She is the recipient of the 2018 Maine Literary Award; the 2016-17 Poets Out Loud Prize, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver; and the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award, selected by Linda Pastan. Her poems and book reviews can be found in Grist, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx and other journals. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, Bouwsma currently serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.