Make Safe My Light

by Wild Soft

because I can't.
It's slipping though I've tried.

Fill these jagged cracks with gold
and polish me to soft lustre–

from a carefully grown callus
springs lenity and
bare fruit.

---

Wild Soft makes her home on the banks of the Ohio River. Her work appears in such magazines as Hermeneutic Chaos, Still: The Journal, Room, and three drops from a cauldron; her first chapbook, in these cups, is forthcoming (Dancing Girl Press). She is the Pushcart nominated collaboration of poets Nicci Mechler, Hilda Weaver, & Wendy Creekmore. Kristin Koester joins in for this work. Blog: wildandsoft.wordpress.com.

Individual bios:

Wendy Creekmore lives in rural Northern Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband, Virgil, and two kitties. At some point of each day, she can be found reading something from stacks of books and a load-heavy Kindle app and journaling furiously. Her work is has appeared in Sugared Water and Journal of Kentucky Studies.

Kristin Koester spends her time battling forest fires in her brain, writing poetry, and making art out of life. She is proud to be Kentucky-born and finds refuge in a nook where the Ohio and Licking Rivers meet, opposite of Cincinnati. Her work appears in Licking River Review.

Nicci Mechler splits her time between writing poetry & speculative fiction, editing various things such as Sugared Water, and painting girls with inky tattoos. She has published in a variety of magazines such as Booth, Kestrel, Roanoke Review, and Arroyo Literary Review. Her chapbook Deep in Flesh is forthcoming (Dancing Girl Press). Blog: damnredshoes.wordpress.com.

Hilda Weaver is a retired psychotherapist, the mother of three, grandmother of four and great grandmother of many. Her poetry appears in Sugared Water, 94 Creations, Offcourse, and Licking River Review. Her first micro chapbook is The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine (Porkbelly Press, 2015).

Photography: adapted from Autumn Red peaches by Jack Dykinga, USDA.