PROSE POETRY

BONNIE DEMERJIAN

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Updraft

​​What a grubby, clerk-like task, to put the wordless into words, to attempt to cement in place the surge of happiness, so pure, at the sight of gulls rising. How long since you were swept into a whirlwind of wings? To describe is like tying an anchor to each fragile leg saying, “I dare you show me that again.” Better to keep it untouched by language and time, preserved in memory’s safe. Still, there is the urge to tell about the sight, hurled up, set gently down, unadulterated by explanation. And who might one tell but a mystic or a poet? I see it now, the despair they feel at trying to recount their tale, yet they must. And so--
 
Light embodied
Summer evening messengers
I understand angels.

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Bonnie Demerjian writes from her island home in Southeast Alaska in the midst the Tongass National Forest on the land of the Lingit Aaní, a place that continually nourishes her writing. Her work has appeared in Alaska Women Speak, Pure Slush, and Blue Heron Review among others.