Floodplain

Emily Tuszynska

All morning in mid-labornot ready for the hospital                                                  walking the floodplain                 the earth still soft                                 waters receded                                                                 tulip poplars                                                                 knotted sycamores                                                                 clumps of grassghosted with siltthe trees leaned downstreamfrom many floods                                                                 I clung to themmy sisters I thought if I thought at allsomehow the term did not seem wrongthe ground was washed bare                                                  fibrous roots exposed                                                                 slack water                                                                 dusty with pollenwe walked and rested and walked againbowing                                                                then kneelingto each contraction as it came                                                                some bright bit of blue                                                                caught on the far bankwithout panicI felt each crest carry me fartheraway from you              away from familiar ground                                                                in the spaces between                                                                your hands                                                                lightly—                                                                the air on my face—maybe I was the trees                                                                their massive trunks shifting                                                                as wind poured                                                                through high branches              maybe I was the riverbed              or the light as it pulsed between moving leavesfrom all about usa wordless insistence                                                                deep in my interior                                                                the forest             the water rising

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Emily Tuszynska lives in Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. Her collection of poems about the upheaval of early motherhood, Surfacing (Grayson Books, 2024), was the winner of the Grayson Books poetry award. Her work can be found in EcoTheo Review, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals. For more information visit emilytuszynska.com

 

Cover of "Surfacing"

West Hartford, Connecticut

The lyrical poems in Surfacing follow a woman into the wilderness of childbirth and child-rearing. Imbued with vivid details and with elements of the natural world, they are poems of spirit, of timelessness, and of expanding love “radiating out…a dispersal of the self.”

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