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"On Needing to See a River" by Keetje Kuipers

The tea-stained mug, my mother’s
voice on the phone saying contraction,

this almost-animal working its paper
ankles and pinkening birch-bark heels

inside me. There is some need
for a river among this, some swelling

to match my own, some sunken, rounded
stones to ground this shimmering surface.

Keetje Kuipers has been the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College. Her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth, won the A. Poulin, Jr. Prize from BOA Editions and was published in 2010. Her second book, The Keys to the Jail, was released in early 2014 from BOA as well. Keetje is an Assistant Professor at Auburn University.