This Assessment is Not Timed

MEGAN MERCHANT

Pick one: Whippoorwill, House Finch, Hummingbird.
Why is it that I can only hold one song
in my head at a time?

Mule deer, course correcting, mid-leap above the car: Swerve, or brake?
My children in the backseat. The answer has impact.

Lose sight or memory? Touch or Taste?
I cut the lemon on a white board,
let it sting-bitter where I sliced the skin clean open.

What would you do if you have been unjustly blamed for something?
            Alejandro Jodorowsky said that “birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”

Choose: You can cure world hunger or global warming?
Dandelion, nettle, elderberry, curled dock.

Do you have a religious practice?
My son is unabashedly convinced that one man cannot stay sky-bound
on days when there are no clouds to bounce from.

We evolved from a black hole: True or False.
Billie Holiday, Blue Moon on the record player. Whiskey, neat.
I take a letter opener, rift what light is left.   

Name one famous work of art that most people recognize: 
Between trees, when he didn’t know I was there,
he climbed into the creek, naked, splashing his back—
a tattoo of vines covering lashed-scars.

Have you ever been in love?
In the city, I bought a black dress with spaghetti straps that I couldn’t afford,
sat next to an old man on the bus who whispered the names of bridges
and shuttered factories. When he peeled a tangerine, the grimy
air suddenly burst into bloom.

Have you ever been married?
I find a snakeskin in the yard, near the edge of a rock.
There was so much quiet in the years we kissed it almost drowned out need.

You are allowed a handful of items to take to a desert island, list them in order:
Violin concerto in an empty room, smell of toasted almonds,
pigeons—like spiled gas on a tarmac, bicycle tires down
a rainy street, creases in an unfinished book, every almost.

Do you experience despair? How often?
An editor said they do not publish poems about birds.
There is more than one way for things to go extinct. 

What is your greatest personal obstacle?
What if I told you that I didn’t have the words for this yet?

Are you easily disappointed?
Maybe I have simplified everything by grooming it into language.
I pull three tarot cards without reading to see what they mean.

Megan Merchant (she/her) is the co-owner of www.shiversong.com and lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ with her husband and two children. She holds an M.F.A. degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV and is the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award), Grief Flowers (2018), four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Philomel Books). Her latest book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press (NYT New & Noteworthy). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, and most recently the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize. She is the Editor of Pirene’s Fountain. You can find her poetry and artwork at  meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.