INTO BEING

Poetry

Jan 15

Here’s the only picture I have left: there is a telephone booth
in Otsuchi, white, four sides made of glass-panes.

In it sits a single black rotary telephone on a metal shelf,
forever disconnected. When one turns

to the right, they are overlooking a sea that once swallowed
the town whole. A wave came so large

there wasn’t time for language. If you go to this phone,
I will be on the other end listening

with my eyes closed. I will say I am here and this
is all the evidence we need.

That the wind carried us places we could not go. And you will say
it bewilders you—this little simulacrum

I’ve made us into.

Poetry

Kimberly Grey

Kimberly Grey is a hybrid, interdisciplinary writer whose work explores memory, trauma, auto-theory, and hybridity. She is the author of the forthcoming book Bewilder Meant (from Persea Books, 2027) and the essay collection A Mother Is an Intellectual Thing (2023). She has also published two acclaimed poetry collections: Systems for the Future of Feeling (2020) and The Opposite of Light (2016), which won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in A Public Space, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Narrative, Tin House, PN Review (UK), and elsewhere. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy, as well as a Taft Research Grant from the University of Cincinnati, where she earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the graduate program at the University of North Texas.

INTO BEING

Rabbit and the Years

DARK INK