STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
CELIA LAWREN
It takes five years to make a pinch of salt,
to turn seawater into sodium chloride,
longer still to return polluted ponds to bay.
From a bridge, these endless saltscapes
blow bright and white as beach sand.
In motion, everything’s a blur
of monochromatic mirages.
Closer still, they appear as Rothkos
of rust, mustard, and lime.
As paint clings to canvas—
each brush stroke, swath of color
builds upon another—
the earth holds on to itself.
Layer upon layer, bones, excretions
of microscopic creatures cling and bind.
Antecedent stream beds patiently wait
for tides to return like veins under skin.
Like family blood lines keep their histories
alive, generation after generation,
in stories told and re-told around kitchen tables,
same biases pounded into the wood.
Salt packed into old wounds
preserves their perspectives.
Even as bay water rushes through
to unblock channels, dilute poisons,
and hide the scars of rusted sluice gates,
crystallizer beds, dredged scrapes on the land,
resentments roil beneath the dirt.
Celia Lawren is the author of the poetry chapbook, Among Dead Things, a chronicle of tragedy and resilience, published by Finishing Line Press. She is the winner of the 2021 Poetry Prize awarded by the Knoxville Writers Guild. Her poems have been published in Catamaran, Caesura, Tule Review, She Speaks: An Anthology of Women of Appalachia, 2021-22, and Colossus: Freedom: An Anthology of Voices Across the Carceral Wasteland 2022. Lawren resides in Knoxville, Tennessee after living many years in the San Francisco Bay Area.
