Poetry by Merna Dyer Skinner

 Matthias Ripp CC




At Dawn                                 

Guttural cries / shake 
me awake / at dawn / 
Confuse my bearings / 
dissolve my dream-

                              escapes / into / liminal light /
                              I bolt upright / eyes strain /
                              searching / for / the source
                              of that scream / 

Yesterday / I failed 
to detect / blind moles 
burrowing / beneath 
my broad / garden’s bed /

                               I did not hear / the ground
                               groan / or see mounds / rising
                               at twilight / Traps / that twisted
                               my ankle / dropped me / to my knees

Outside / my bedroom window /
conifer branches / hang low
Choked with cones / their sticky-
sap-soaked needles / camouflage 

                              crows / corvine cousins / of ravens /
                              Thick-necked / ravagers whose 
                              sharp beaks / will bowie-knife
                              a mole / flick aside / flesh and fur

before devouring / meat scraps  
still warm / I question the shriek /
wonder if / a crow awoke / before 
day began / hungry / alert /

                              Did that keen-eyed bird / kill a baby
                              rabbit /Catch it / by its neck / carry it
                              to my rooftop / Or / did the wail 
                              rage out of me /

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Merna Dyer Skinner is a poet, editor, and communications consultant living in Portland, OR. Her poems appear in numerous US and international journals, including: SWWIM, Whale Road Review, Rust & Moth, ONE ART, and The Baltimore Review, among others, and six anthologies. Her second chapbook Things Hidden in My Throat is a finalist in Comstock Review’s 2025 Poetry Chapbook Prize.  Merna is the editor of the forthcoming Casting Lines, An Anthology of Fishing Poems by Female Poets. An avid photographer, Merna will travel to her seventh continent, Africa, in early 2026.


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