In a twinkling, the girl turned into a sparrow, the boy into a wren. No, girl into ocean waves churning, boy into froth, wind, sunlight glinting on shore. Or boy into rooster, girl into fox. Possibly a hunting party gathered. Possibly another suitor and maiden hid in the wood and watched the chase while the girl slowly combed her luxurious red hair. The boy and girl moved like flames glimpsed from the corner of an eye. It might have been mercy, that escape from such monstrous desire. But not as comets ablaze across the velvet night. No, not as moonlight resting lightly on any body of water. Maybe boy into lightning, girl into struck rock. Maybe girl into oak, boy into ivy, into moss, climbing up, trailing down. Does it matter?

Kathleen McGookey’s

most recent book is Heart in a Jar (White Pine Press, 2017). She is also the author of Stay (Press 53, 2015), October Again (Burnside Review Press, 2012), Whatever Shines (White Pine Press, 2001). In 2011, Parlor Press published We’ll See, a book of her translations of contemporary French poet Georges Godeau’s prose poems.

Poems, prose poems, and translations by McGookey have appeared in more than 50 literary venues, including among others: Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Epoch, Field, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Rhino, Seneca Review, The Antioch Review, The Laurel Review, West Branch, Willow Springs; and in these anthologies published by White Pine Press: Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (2016), The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal (2000), The House of Your Dream: An International Collection of Prose Poetry (2008), and The Party Train: A Collection of North American Prose Poetry (1996).

McGookey has received grants from the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the Arts Fund of Kalamazoo County, the Sustainable Arts Foundation (2014), and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She has taught creative writing at Hope College, Interlochen Arts Academy, and Western Michigan University.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ McGookey’s collection of prose poems Heart in a Jar was reviewed most recently by Amelia Martens in The Bind (7 September 2017), and Laura Donnelly in the Kenyon Review.

⚡ Her collection of prose poems Stay is reviewed by Jessie Carty in The Rumpus (April 2016).

⚡ Two Poems by Kathleen McGookey, “The Story of My Life” and “October, Illness,” in Diode (Summer 2013)