This Is Pressure, Not Erasure
by Shannon Blank
This thing I have not in my mind
but body
and not a thing but place I have
here knotted uptight oddly.
A saturated seashore or a weakness changed
from strength
that’s doubled here in depth
and doubled there in length.
The sea-shore saturated, the brine and
sand blended
the stark apart that had been kept
gets gradually distended.
A nibbling tide not asking for my
pardon
drenches in erasing the
distinctions of these margins.
Shannon Blank is a young woman reading and writing in the border foothills of West Virginia.
Photography by Kenneth Godoy