POETRY
“Both revelatory and mysterious, Lindsay Rockwell...shows us the path without giving us the answers. Lindsay’s sparse lines tumble readers down toward realization, toward the bristling static of something more, just beyond the veil.”
“Witness”
Arc of oriole
a singular arithmetic
“There Is Talk Among the Living and the Dead”
—mercurial—like a balance in an offering hand moonlight lands like glyph on stone a fox falls in love with the stampede of stars
how the sail of the wolves’
slow howl distills the singular
silence of dark.
A scene of children dressed in red and yellow flames/running headlong into walls/stuns the corners of her thoughts
Each loss fits inside the others. Each loss folds itself neatly inside, then quietly clears its throat of shame.
the rooks and hives have gone quiet
what appears to be the ear of God
“Speaking of Loneliness”
Still, I prepare for magic.
Listen to music that beats
like hooves galloping
the brink. The seam of me
so delicate...
“A Woman and a Stone”
Her child/ looks at the sky. Grows wings.
Sings the history of work. Of flight.
His voice made of felt. Made of jet fuel...
“The Muse Her Chisel at My Dark”
A woman’s mouth in the dark opens. Her breath—hot and metaphysical.
An open door is etched into the flesh of her chest. When it rains
For years now not sleeping. Night and no light to sing to.
“I Hear the Earth Go On”
how roads lie down inside us. All’s hum, insect thread and the cherry’s wide blossom fall.
“The Democracy of Rain”
[to be published Spring 2025]
“Dear My Insides Will You Be My Boat”
Once, I knew a thought. A miracle of round— circumference
Zero sum of sound when sun arrives in pleated seams.
Sound of light is not feet love earth come rain
or lean into horse, her heft to hold.
It is feather’s dream of wind—
monk’s robe rushing toward still mind.
There are ashes everywhere.
Driftwood. Grasslands. Bone.
Shadows of moon and metal. Tides.
How questions wobble. Artists flinch.
You walk backward. Out of the sea. Empty
your pockets of stones. Pockets that had taken.
Years to fill. You empty each one.
As though you might lay the stones
on your dresser and count the change.
“My Patient Brings A Poem To Her Appointment and Transforms the Nature of Medicine”
If the mind is a star
tethered to a body if
breath wings of sun and moon then you
Look beyond as far as you can see—
the wars have ended. No more
blood spatter. A large man plays piano
in the street, with whatever's left
of his inside that listens to river's hymn—
Cento After Arecelis Girmay
and I wish I could remember what we did with our faces.
The weather of the house, dressed in sparrows
and daylight. Sunlight falling over us.
The sixteen stars keeping time. Your heart, a fist
of windows and church-bells. Obscene, the beauty.
Tell me
about alabaster, how you have forgotten
the colors, though not the way
the liquid consonants roll on your tongue. Silk. The Lord.
“My Stone Self and the Forgotten Calves”
I sit still as stone counting how many times my breath stops. Stand on the edge of a cliff,
about which one was the one.
The one born from pewter.
Or gossamer.
How violin strings don't weep.
Because they do.
Iron Horse Literary Review – “This Woman’s Work”
Pacifica Literary Review – “The Drowning”
Two Hawks Quarterly – “What I Meant to Say”
Sinister Wisdom – “Rage”
Writing in a Woman’s Voice – “Some Days She Loves”
BlazeVox – Creation Myth – “We Could Make This Place Beautiful, Right?”
Birmingham Arts Journal – “Note to Self”