morning/night poetry

Good Morning, I too am learning something new today

by Devin Kelly

outside the tutor is teaching everyone how to love I cannot hear his words but walk down the stairs to the smell of smoke anything can be a sentence he says it just depends on where you place the period hello teacher a student asks can my arms be a sentence if I stretch them long enough the tutor nods & then becomes a cloud which we all do someday when the cloud above our dying falls as rain which then melts toward earth which then admits us as soft as it will allow which is why we call it mother hello are you there none of this happened I am just trying to divine better & less vacant words for love you’re growing tired of my poetry just as I am growing tired of myself did you hear the story of the woman who married the dolphin & still let him flirt with all the other dolphins & make little dolphin babies this world is more a prairie than a sentence it stretches on under light until it folds into itself every day I teach myself how to love I wake up & open my eyes I say it is okay if you only want to touch yourself today I say around the corner is the coffee for a dollar put on those pants that fit too loose & the shirt with all the holes & make of your body a stranger you desire to learn as you would history as you would a song as you would another — Devin Kelly is is the author of the books Blood on Blood (Unknown Press), and In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (CCM), and the winner of a Best of the Net Prize. He is the Interviews Editor for Full Stop and co-hosts the Dead Rabbits Reading Series in New York City. He works as an afterschool director in Queens, teaches at the City College of New York, and lives in Harlem. Artwork by: Emily Wiethorn Emily Wiethorn (b.1991) is a photographic artist currently based in Lincoln, NE where she will graduate with her MFA in Studio Art at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is an Instructor of Record and holds a Graduate Teaching Assistantship. She received her BFA in Photography from Northern Kentucky University. She has most recently been awarded the 2017 SPE Student Award for Innovations in Imaging, was a Critical Mass finalist in 2017, a finalist for The Texas Photographic Society’s National Photography Award, and is a featured artist in the spring 2018 issue of PDNedu. Her work has been published online with Musee Magazine, Lenstratch, Loosen Art, among others. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally in China and Italy. She works primarily in self-portraiture where she explores notions of feminine identity, societal constructs of femininity, and self-discovery. Links Website: www.emilywiethorn.com Instagram: @emily.wiethorn
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