We’re proud to announce “A Sailor’s Language” by Taunja Thomson as an honorable mention for a 2017 Spring Poetry Contest! A specials thanks to our poetry staff for all of their hard work!

A Sailor’s Language

I am a music box
only I can wind up—
no pirouetting
but a sharp unfolding.
I don pink eye shadow
blow mauve bubbles
put a rose collar
on my lucky cat
yet my frown is grey
my wallpaper storm clouds
and the inside of my box
once velvet
is creased and stained.
I can wind up toy mice
release thin-skinned
balloons and watch the sun
rise. I can also pick
at wounds
keen for the moon
wear heavy curves
and jagged knuckles.
I am Girl
the one you thought was soft
ripe and yours.
Now you know I am not
apple or apron my mother’s eyes
my father’s fawn—
I release myself across fields
and into mountains
cross rivers
navigate oceans
wear a sailor’s language.

Taunja Thomson’s poetry has most recently appeared in Peacock Journal and Zingara. Two of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards: “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005 and “I Walked Out in January” in 2016. She has co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry which has recently been accepted for publication and has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter. A worshiper of nature, her summers are filled with water gardening, and her winters are spent obsessively feeding the birds and other wildlife that appear in her one-acre slice of heaven, a field.