Oronym

Abstract

Oronym Emma Aylor (bio) In a dream, I go to the hill graveyardand sit in a red-open woundin its center. Steam rises from my shoulders as if from sea.I hold nothing in my hands. Stones,loose in their sockets, unslot from names. Next morning,thick fog floats us overPortage Bay on the bridge: no Cascades to the east, no bodybeneath. Every mountain and hillshall be made low, smoothed to a flat of white plain—to be blanketedand slivered this way, to rivera thread through each hole. The bus mumbles like a boat,under my hip-points sway of water.Top of my head dull with its rock. Socked-in, my family calls it, a smokethat coats the Blue Ridge foothillsand means—in winter—rain, slopes around us daubed to outline, then going.Some days the air could clearjust before night came on for the long [End Page 28] setting of a sun we didn't see:over an hour, whole lit; even as we cutthe porch light, the west flared a little still, and the oak moon drewa dashed path through our fields.We carried the old quilts out. It grew darker. Every mountain and hill shall be made low,the sky's black water puckered in places by light. [End Page 29] Emma Aylor Emma Aylor's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, and the Cincinnati Review, among other journals, and she received Shenandoah's 2020 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. She lives in Lubbock, Texas. Copyright © 2021 Berea College