BROWSE Columns
✕
Learning to walk as an act of
learning to try. Becoming a bird
as an act of rest. Perching in the window
as a meditation on the bottle.
Leaping as an act of
falling. Falling as the act of
driving up and down Vermont county roads.
Headlights caught guilty in the act of searching.
Headlights caught guilty in the act
of the three point turn.
Returning home as an act of defeat.
Hanging your coat as a dance
There are only ten ways to move
a body.
Wring: out the sheets. What they hold
you do not need. Or want, do you?
Press: further into yourself. As
an act of collapse, possible rebirth.
Flick: forgetting as an act of mercy.
Downing the lights as prayer.
Dab: need I say it? Need I drag you
to the hills and show it to you?
Glide: to change. Change and change
and change again. Have you changed?
Float: Have you chained? Check the ground,
wrists. Are you connected to the earth or to the floor?
Punch: Driving your fists in the act of fixing it.
What purpose has anything else– if not to mend?
Slash: You have come a long way, have you not?
Carry what you need. Empty the bag.
Photograph by Jermaine Ulinwa
Victoria Gransee is a creative writing major at Bennington College, and has also previously studied writing at Interlochen Arts Academy. In 2022, a poem of hers was awarded a Gold Key in the Scholastic Writing Competition, and a collection of three of her poems won Editor’s Pick during the Brain Mill Press summer contest. Her previous works have been published in several print publications, including the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Art of Writing Conference Anthology and three issues of the Interlochen Arts Camp Summer Anthology, as well as Inlandia Litmag, Trace Fossils, and Salmon Creek Journal.
