I am nothing, made of nothing, always
flowing towards other bodies of water
for want of freedom, or release, thinking this
to be my new beginning, a place where all my
knotting will become untied, & I, for once,
will not be seeking shelter, & instead, I will
lay myself beneath the hinterlands, having
collected such iridescent heaving within my basin,
& all the stones in my belly will have grown
heavy from centuries of pulling & pulling, having
sharpened themselves against upstream currents,
& what is left to do then but only to long for
the brilliant deep blue, to belong once more
among the waters above the firmament, where
once it was so, before our mouths became sour &
suddenly knew the purpled taste of loss, & here
I am again, disarmed of my own scaffoldings, needing
the first clothing, a small kindness within the rupturing,
freshwater, seawater, bloodwater – all, in me, needing
to be collected, to be gathered again, away
from the storms that have yet to come.
Contributor Notes
Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Poets.org, The 2River View, Luna Luna Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Numero Cinq, and more. Her short story The River received an honorable mention from Glimmer Train’s Open Fiction Contest. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections; FUCHSIA (University of Nebraska Press, 2016) which won the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets; YOUR BODY IS WAR (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and NOMENCLATURES OF INVISIBILITY (BOA Editions Ltd., 2023). She is also the author of the chapbook collection BEHIND WALLS & GLASS (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She has served as an editor, curator or advisor for different literary journals including Atlas and Alice, The Bleeding Lion, The Hunger Mountain, and more. She is the founder and executive director of ANAPHORA ARTS, a nonprofit organization that advocates for writers and artists of color. She has served as a jury member for different literary prizes and artist residencies, including the Neudstat International Prize for Literature, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Lucy Munro Brooker Prize, and more. She is a Pushcart prize nominee, and her work has been anthologized widely. As of 2020, she also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today, where she curated the Black Voices Series (2020, 2021) and the New African Voices portfolio. She holds an MFA from Vermont College.
