Poetry by Sandra Fees

​Dr. Matthias Ripp CC




not / holding

isn’t marriage / a corpus
       a body / to be warmed / by my own

                             not a ribcage / riven in the valley
                             not a felled tree / for someone / to straddle 
                                     for something / to wash over

isn’t tenderness / a libation / for skin’s / bedazzlement 
       a river’s / flanks to be grazed / by my own

                            not a bright / fish
                            not a crucible
                                    impossible / to hold





Self-Portrait as Seed, Plow, Prophecy

Because I do not know how to be feral,
sowing what can save the world

because I do not know how to feather
a nest or make a peace that will last.

I try to break open my mouth like first light.

Because I do not know how to honey
the storms or thistle off grief

because each day begins again
without cloud, without reprieve.

I let the throat be seed, plow, prophecy--

because I do not know how to unwind
the spell whispered in my ear.




​Sandra Fees has been published in SWWIM and Nimrod and has work forthcoming in Witness and Border Crossing. She is a 2022 contest finalist in Sweet: A Literary Confection and semifinalist in Crab Creek Review. The author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017), she lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.