Emily Toder’s I Hear a Boat + Joan Fleming’s Two Dreams in which Things Are Taken

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Emily Toder is the author of the chapbook Brushes with (Tarpaulin Sky, 2010). Her work has appeared in various journals, among them jubilat, Sixth Finch, New Ohio Review, and The Rialto, and her translation of Edgar Bayley’s short fiction is due out this fall from Clockroot Books. She lives in Northampton, Mass., where she runs the small Nor By Press.

From I Hear a Boat:

The Beetle

Because I have no judgment

seasonless leaves

stick to my heels

and when I go up hills

the heels leave leaves on the hills

For I have no judgment;

some bugs I like

some bugs I don’t like

like all beings

Like all beings

I compel myself to move

or something foreign

compels me

I later thank

Read more of Emily’s poems  here and here.

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Joan Fleming‘s work has appeared in various journals, among them Best New Zealand Poems, Sport, JAAM, and Turbine. She lives in Golden Bay where she tutors creative writing for Massey University and works nights in a café. She also teaches poetry to children at the local primary schools, and sometimes makes short films.

From Two Dreams in which Things Are Taken:

Lake

A lake of foster children hold hands in her mind. But sometimes they are swimming, so all she can see is their backs, their white backs like the dark-lake creatures you can’t see and so are certain they’re there. This is the mind she will give birth with. The children must be still, and stand up from the lake streaming and changing before she can ask, what’s your favourite colour? Did you brush against the weeds? What’s it like being invisible? Have you come far? What did you see?

Read more of Joan’s poems here, here, and here.

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