[Poetry] Two Poems by Sarah E N Kohrs

The Thinning of a Moon Snail Shell

Dark tides, etched with pearl,

whet the shoreline where

a frill like chanterelle rises

beyond its resinous hatch.

A sole of sinuses siphons off

water over a façade of winkless blue

eye, whose stare defies everything from

algal blooms to the overuse of a world once

known as intimately as the rounded oh

of joyful discovery. Curiosity. Delight

at simply being. Long ago. Long ago. Now

everything spritzes into veliger that grow to know

the reason for razor-edged radula in a land

of frothy waves. Who will remember

the moon snail? Her life of thinning.

As threadbare as sunflowers faded

into final cadence. Yet, once as continuous

as a resonant sonorous round of song.

In a Sea of Steep Grief

I am the pucker-crackle

             implanted along the jawline;

a calving iceberg that smacks

             the water like Xerxes' lashings.

I am the hand gripping fetters

             photoshopped from history.

Awake in a Van Gogh night

             whose stars are no longer used

for circumnavigation, for

             irrigation of hope to the many.

What can the undulating rings

             from just one tear touch

in a sea of steep grief—wild

             stampede of a branded world?

I am the checkered wings of

             a red-shouldered hawk,

as wide as a shawl woven

             from wild grasses and laid

across your shoulders while we

             weep, then work. Together.

Sarah E N Kohrs is a writer and artist with poems published in Arboreal Literary Magazine, Bluebird Word, Chariot Press, Culinary Origami, The Elevation, GROUND, Kitchen Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Rattle’s Poets Respond, Stoneboat, Wild Roof Journal, and numerous other literary journals. She has received the Peter K. Hixson Poetry Award, as well as Poetry Society of Virginia's Dr. Lucille E Thompson Memorial, Judah, Sarah, Grace, & Tom Memorial, Ekphrastic Poetry, Don Frew & John Newcomb Memorial, and Ada Sanderson Memorial Awards. Her chapbook, Chameleon Sky, won the 2022 Kingdoms in the Wild poetry award. Sarah has a BA in Classical Languages and Archaeology from College of Wooster, Ohio, and a Virginia teaching license endorsed in Latin and Visual Arts. Life experiences that bolster her art include homeschooling her sons, creating pottery for local Empty Bowl suppers, and volunteering for the rural non-profit, Valley Educational Center for the Creative Arts (VECCA). SENK lives in Shenandoah County, Va, on land she humbly recognizes belonged to the Manahoac. https://senkohrs.com.