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Annette Sisson

Instinct for Touch

            We wake. The owls
​            ​            convulse the woods below.
​            Stiff as possums, 
we lie on a rummaged 
​            mattress, the screened 
​            ​            porch our answer 
​            to April’s early swelter. 
Their bellows, hoots, 
​            call and response, 
​            ​            their instinct for touch—  
​            like our bodies, 
sleep’s arrival, even
​            in heat’s ruthless press, 
​            ​            sheathed in barest gauze, 
​            brush of sheet on skin.

​            And we long to touch 
​            ​            the dead, loft words 
​            to dormant ears, 
voices to clouds 
​            beseeching rain, 
​            ​            its graze, thunder, 
​            its burst, antiphonal 
rumble from the other 
​            side. We are owls 
​            ​            coveting the dark 
​            echo of our need, 
naked slumberers 
​            ​reaching for cover.

Biography

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Annette Sisson (she/her/hers) has published poems in Nashville Review, Typishly, One, HeartWood, Cordella, Psaltery & Lyre, The West Review, and others. She published a chapbook, A Casting Off (Finishing Line, 2019) and was named a 2020 BOAAT Writing Fellow, received honorable mention in Passager’s 2019 poetry contest, and won The Porch Writers’ Collective’s 2019 poetry prize. Her recent book-length poetry manuscript, Small Fish in High Branches, has been a finalist with Glass Lyre Press and a semifinalist for the Brittingham & Felix Pollak Prize (U of Wisconsin Press).
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    • Issue 25
    • Issue 24
    • Issue 23
    • Issue 22
    • Issue 21
    • Issue 20
    • Issue 19
    • Issue 18
    • Serenity
    • Issue 17
    • The Audio Room
    • Issue 16
    • Issue 15
    • Issue 14
    • Play It Again
    • Issue 13
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 10
    • Issue 9
    • Issue 8
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 6
    • Hand to Mouth
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 3
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    • Issue 1
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