EMBLAZONED
By Joddy Murray
Published Issue 109, January 2023
In one salad you see our eyes, our tongues
bent in partial curls like potato chips—
half-spoken and thumping with an aboriginal beat.
Sometimes embroidered on skirts or flayed
cuffs is a declaration: time monogramed. In
hindsight, you bend your day, your husky reality
voiced and emblazoned with broth, with bone.
Boiled down. Reduced. Concentrated like sight.
Joddy Murray’s chapbook, Anaphora, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, The Torrid Literature Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, The Fourth River, Prism Review, Nude Bruce Review, OxMag, Perceptions Magazine, Cape Rock, and Sou’wester Literary Magazine. He currently lives in Marion, Illinois.
This is Joddy’s debut into Birdy. Keep your eyes peeled for more of his work in the near future.