A Bright Nowhere

Abstract

A Bright Nowhere Kelly Sievers (bio) A Bright Nowhere Its heft and hush become a bright nowhere s. heaney Why poetry, you once asked me. The evening you died I stood at my window—thirteen stories high—watching a curve of traffic head home. A stream of red,each car blinking and blurring. Your life a bright jazz.I, the horn, the guitar, riffing.Your call to improviselifting me up and out.No gift, thissilence. Last autumn from a Neah Bay cabin window—grey mist. Wingsof birds etching a refrain leading to an island in unexpected lightor, maybe not an island at all. [End Page 168] Cape Flattery, the tipof the Olympic Peninsula.No forward there.But didn't we both lovestories of the sea? [End Page 169] Kelly Sievers Kelly Sievers lives in Portland, Oregon. Her work is published in a number of literary journals and in nine anthologies. The most recent anthology is Learning to Heal: Reflections on Nursing School in Poetry and Prose (Kent State UP, 2018), and other new works appear in Valley Voices, San Pedro River Review, Ekphrasis, and Rockvale Review. Her online poetry can be found at the Permanente Journal, Permanente's Leaflet, and the Oregon Poetic Voices Project (OPV), a digital archive of poetry readings from across the state of Oregon. Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press