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From “Shadow Poems”

By Jennifer Foerster

The war appeared to be coming to an end.

The no-name people not yet taken
left their crops for summer’s drought.

A bow in the mouth, they passed unseen,
forded the river for rock trout, crystals,
the eastward hillside dense with vines.

Eyeing the sunrise, they travelled for days
and lost in the reeds heard everything—

earthworms, thunder,
yesterday’s moss,

the patient banks of morning.

 

 

Listen as Jennifer Foerster reads "From 'Shadow Poems' ".
Added: Tuesday, April 13, 2021  /  Used with permission
Jennifer Elise Foerster
Photo by Richard Bluecloud Castaneda.

Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of two books of poetry, Leaving Tulsa and Bright Raft in the Afterweather. An alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts, she received her PhD at the University of Denver and her MFA at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. Foerster is of European (German/Dutch) and Mvskoke descent, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She lives in San Francisco.

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