a fox jumps from the twig-sinewed forest.winter gnaws on the ruins of stags, bone rags,hoarse birdsong. a child says winter, meaningfather. mother was a river, and below the ice,the children were swimming. it was easierfor father to love the earth than another,to adore shadows who do not have mouths.in January, I send him a letter to saya grey heron was locked in a frozen riverand consumed by foxes. he mumbleshow even saints were fed to bears,or he is only snowing gently,only a boy brave enoughto drink from a cow’s uddersin a field feathered in dandelion seeds.grandfather shepherded cows in that field,and if the dead may choose one field,then this is my father’s field.my life is the distance from that field.I love only rivers, rivers, rivers.
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Feature Date
- July 22, 2023
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Copyright © 2023 by Triin Paja.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Triin Paja lives in a small village in rural Estonia. She is the author of three collections of poetry in Estonian and a recipient of the Värske Rõhk Poetry Award, the Betti Alver Literary Award, and the Juhan Liiv Prize for Poetry. Her English poetry has received two Pushcart Prizes and her chapbook, Sleeping in a Field (forthcoming in 2024), won the Wolfson Poetry Chapbook Prize.
49.1
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
The University of Alabama
Editor
Jackson Saul
Managing Editor
Josh Brandon
Poetry Editor
Kelsey Nuttall
Black Warrior Review is named for the river that borders the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Established in 1974 by graduate students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing, BWR is the oldest continuously-run literary journal produced by graduate students in the United States.
BWR publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice a year. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners alongside emerging writers. Work appearing in BWR has been reprinted in the Pushcart Prize series, Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, New Stories from the South, and other anthologies.
Black Warrior Review is indexed in Humanities International Complete, the Book Reviews Index, and the MLA International Bibliography. ISSN: 0193-6301
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