All in by Julie L. Moore

Slow Work

SWWIM Every Day
by Julie L. Moore

by Julie L. Moore


I awoke to a song in the field,
penny whistle beckoning in the pitch
of expectation, last evening’s sleet
sighing beneath the morning sun.

Nothing melts this month, least of all hearts
of ice. What else can I say? The devil does exist

in the dreadful details. His heavy musk
hangs in the air, clawing at us. He is father
to many lies because his misery
loves their company.

But oh, that song! It lifts me
not into rapture over the Valentine sky—

this is not about transcendence—
but into the slow work of the rabbit outside,
foraging for food amid the shrubs,
toting a twig back to its den.

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A Best of the Net and eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Recent poetry has appeared in African American Review, Fare Forward, Image Journal, Quartet, River Heron Review, Thimble, and Verse Daily. See julielmoore.com.

What to Lay Down

SWWIM Every Day
by Julie L. Moore

by Julie L. Moore


Bobby pin, button, lozenge, dime.
Souvenir, emery board, obsession

with time. Lay them down.
Phone number on a slip of paper,

you can’t remember whose.
Your aunt’s old postcard from Galapagos,

your inability to choose. Lay them down.
The angry words you want to speak,

the grudge you work so hard to keep.
Your petty predilections, small

& senseless premonitions. Lay them down.
The marriage you thought would last

your whole life, dreams you once had
as his faithful wife. I tell you: Lay them down.

Unburdened as you’ll later be, relinquish
one more thing: the birth name you gave

your younger child because now she says it’s dead.
Though it stretch the string between your heart

& head, though it nearly snap in half,
give it up, let it go, lay it down, too.

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A Best of the Net and six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Julie L. Moore is the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, New Ohio Review, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, Verse Daily, and a dozen anthologies. She is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University, where she is also the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Learn more about her work at julielmoore.com.