memory is what I tell myself I buriedin the backyard as a child, but it wasn’t. a toypirate chest filled with stones so smoothI couldn’t help but call themtreasure. The word river spoken with twice the reverence of god. I could see the river,it was there and reed-lined and living,a thing I could drown in if I tried hard enough,or didn’t. Those were not the banksa person could grow older on, just more tired.When I say I never had the energy to swimto the other side what I mean is I tried,I really did, but I only slipped under it,saw what was beneath and hidden in the silt.drank the water, the soil, and what was in that too.I won’t say I drowned,that feels too final, butI haven’t stopped glowing since.
the only colors left were blood and earth and still I dreamed of water
E. B. Schnepp
Feature Date
- November 7, 2023
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First published in The South Dakota Review, pp. 86
Copyright © 2023 by E.B. Schnepp.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
57.2
Vermillion, South Dakota
University of South Dakota
Editor-in-Chief
Lee Ann Roripaugh
Managing Editor
duncan b. barlow
South Dakota Review is committed to cultural and aesthetic diversity. First and foremost, we seek to publish exciting and compelling work that reflects the full spectrum of the contemporary literary arts. Since its inception in 1963, South Dakota Reviewhas maintained a tradition of supporting work by contemporary writers writing from or about the American West. We hope to retain this unique flavor through particularly welcoming works by American Indian writers, writers addressing the complexities and contradictions of the “New West”, and writers exploring themes of landscape, place, and/or eco-criticism in surprising and innovative ways. At the same time, we’d like to set these ideas and themes in dialogue with and within the context of larger global literary communities. South Dakota Review publishes fiction, poetry, essays (and mixed/hybrid-genre work), as well as literary reviews, interviews, and translations.
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