A drawing of a woman with long hair resting beside a floating lake.

Two Poems

Issue 20 Poetry

ARKANSAS WRITERS AWARD WINNER &
EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD

BY EK KRONE

hunters & gatherers

everything i am is reinforced by everything i am not:

boy means not girl, girl means not God, God means not real;

not real as in the fact that i am a selfish girl: you give & i gather.
you hunt & i harvest. this body, a field of flesh so full & still frail.

when your eyes take me in, i will leave with more than you have, shocked
at what can fit in the still open mouth, what words could break

the small line of dissonance between damned & done for.

Genesis

although he eats, you—bitter, hunger for more. sink
the starved teeth into the mouth, bite out any word
that might say tomorrow. say tomorrow.  i want to feel
your lips, how your chest will rise & fall, feel you take
the bite, the snake to Eve. i do not require much tempting.

EK Krone is a jailhouse preacher’s daughter. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas and the Editor-in-Chief at dogyard mag. A trans southerner, she can be found stomping around in the woods or on ekkrone.com.
Image Credit: “Hope” by Muyang Li
Muyang Li is an illustrator currently based in New York. Her work explores dreams, memory, and visual storytelling. Working with analog media and printmaking, she creates imagery inspired by nature and quiet observation, blurring reality and imagination to evoke introspective, dreamlike worlds.