GRIEF Poem: Three Summers, by Samantha Malay

wind lifts a tarp from a half-wrecked car
floats cottonwood seeds to my neighbor’s pool
once host to dangling feet
beer bottle clink
and barbecue smoke

on a narrow stretch of the continent
birds flew from cactus nests
to an empty beach
I peeled a mango in the bathroom sink
slept to the sounds of a ceiling fan

in a dream I searched a road through the woods
for a dog that had jumped from the back of a truck
I saw the papery husk of a garter snake
my ankles snared in baling twine
parts of myself long extinct

Bio:

Samantha Malay’s poetry was recently published in Heading In and Out: Transient Life Poems (Poets’ Choice, 2024) and Mantis. Steel Toe Books short-listed her chapbook Realm (2023), and Shark Reef Magazine nominated her poem Between for a Pushcart Prize (2020). She grew up in rural northeastern Washington state, where her family built a cabin with timbers salvaged from an abandoned homestead, hauled water from a creek, and read by kerosene lamp. Her experiences in that time and place continue to shape her work. Her published words can be found at https://samanthamalay.com/.