Featured Poem • February 2018
This Body Made
Beth Cato
when she rebuilt her body she used driftwood for bone dry as it was the weathered wood thrummed with the ebb and flow of the sea for flesh she wove marsh grass that bent yet did not break even beneath bitter sun and cruel hurricane winds her eyes became stones smoothed by centuries of relentless erosion with them she saw past the horizon to futures that sparkled like white sand beneath a full moon for her heart she placed a sparrow dizzied by storms the bird made itself a new home among her driftwood ribs played peek-a-boo within her thatched grass skin soon, eggs created new warmth to ward against brisk nights she waited, impatient for the first breath of summer for the crackle of eggshells for her new tongue of flower stems to learn the hatchlings’ songs
Nebula-nominated Beth Cato is the author of the Clockwork Dagger duology and the new Blood of Earth trilogy from Harper Voyager. Her newest novel is Call of Fire.
She’s a Hanford, California, native transplanted to the Arizona desert, where she lives with her husband and son. Follow her at BethCato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.
About the writing of “This Body Made,” she shared, “Every so often, I write a piece like this, where a woman rebuilds herself in fantastical ways. It’s a phenomenon I can’t escape writing because I know it well myself, having fought (and continued to fight) depression and agoraphobia, elements of my own mind that would wall me off from the world. Emerging from that place is a kind of do-it-yourself resurrection.”
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