From WTP Vol. V #8

Riverbank
By Katrinka Moore

At dusk they climb down
from the ridge, slope dense
with goat’s-thorn, and lie
on a low sandy bank.  Across

the river limestone cliffs rise
straight out of the water.  A bad
place to sleep if rain comes but
they are tired, do not think.  Deep

night they wake, cliffs on fire —
conflagration, searchlights? Stay
still.  Full moon lifts above the ridge,
white-gold, illuminates limestone, glow

spilling over the wayfarers.  Beyond,
somewhere, arpeggio of howls.[gap height=”20″]

Sometimes I intentionally pair a poem and image and sometimes I make them separately, only later finding that they belong together.

I want the visual art and the poem to complement one another, similar to a Japanese haiga, in which the image does not illustrate the text but deepens its meaning. I make these assemblages by placing stalks, wildflowers, and stones on the flatbed scanner glass, creating scenes that fall somewhere between nature and the supernatural.“ —Katrinka Moore

Image: Thicket, Katrinka Moore. Stalks, wildflowers placed on flatbed scanner glass. 4” x 6”

Katrinka Moore is the author of Numa, Thief, This is Not a Story, and the forthcoming Wayfarers. This is Not a Story won the New Women’s Voices Prize in 2003 and Thief was a contest finalist in 2008 for Marsh Hawk Press, Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and the Wick Poetry Prize. She has poems in the Paulinskill Poetry Project’s Voices from Here, Vol. II, Milkweed Editions’ Stories from Where We Live, The Best of the Texas Poetry Calendar, and This Full Green Hour, an anthology of the One O’clock Poets.