Alice Templeton’s poetry collection The Infinite Field was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in April 2024. Her chapbook Archaeology won the 2008 New Women’s Voices Prize in Poetry from Finishing Line Press, and her poems have appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Bellingham Review, Calyx, Nimrod, Poetry, and other publications. She is also the author of a scholarly book on Adrienne Rich’s poetics and articles on contemporary poetry and literary theory. Originally from Tennessee, Templeton lives in Point Richmond, California.
Berkeley, California
Souls are en route
to their rest this hour. I sit with my share
of solitude, culling books to lighten
my load, at peace with endings on earth.
A world away, the farm looms in me,
smell of honey and itch of timothy,
the mare’s muzzle at my neck, the sun
bedding down in the neighbor’s field
as the distant highway moans.
More than nostalgia—
my life calls me home. Duties await me
there, burials under the brittle pecan
where the grass overgrows and the gates
are left open. Of all my belongings
this weathered map tells my ways.
I pack my things, humming old hymns
of release as dusk dissolves to evening.
This is the hour creatures come close:
The horses have ambled
into the lot for the night. At the trough
they nose the water’s surface, waking a little
in the new chill—now that day is done
and the air has grown rare and precise.
from The Infinite Field (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2024)
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in a wide variety of journals, including Canadian Woman Studies, Hive, Meniscus, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, and The North. Her debut collection, Women Twice Removed, is published by Sixteen Rivers Press. She lives in San Francisco.
You, who rescued a boy-afflicted cat
from perishing in the gutters, toweling
its oiled pelt clean. Who rushed
a hound to the spigots to wash away
toad venom from its shocked mouth.
Who saved a blot of Dalmatians
from the chafe of pet store chains
and named them after pharaohs’ glittering
cities. Who tended to a canary in egg-
binding agony, careful not to crush
its juddered breast. Who released
a pigeon from its jailing grate, geckos
from dosed rooms. O holy steward,
minister to all living beings, pray for us
now as we tend to your feral body.
from EcoTheo Nov. 2021
