Vroege RecensentenErinn Batykefer

WORK SAMPLE Allegheny Love Letter by Erinn Batykefer As the knife is made to cut, I can be nothing less than I am, and so I will be honest: I have no memory, and I am always running away. Even after rain, when my skin is glass and I reflect back everything you say, already a dam is opening upstream to wash you away. You know this, as you must know that in me, eyeless, limivorous fishes dig food from the muck among rotting suicides, that every flood has me spilling sewage and gore over my banks. And still, there you are among sycamores or waving from bridges. Like a fool you carry me with you in the volume of your skin like a photo; green veins tattoo a map of me over your wrists. You must know that if I love you back it will be at sixty-thousand cubic feet per second. This is not meander, not the slow lave of an oxbow. This is ark and animals scrambling for high ground, eyes rolling. Below the surface, my current gathers itself into what I really am: amnesiac, unmerciful. I will sweep you away, and when you are gone, in relentless grief I will flood my banks to touch the earth where you stood and wash them down to bedrock.