Sasquatch mourns those who died trying to find him
Jared Beloff
Juniper
Sandra Wilcoxon
Last week, two men died
searching under a cloud’s shadow—
lost in the gray distance
between faith and belief.
This morning I watched
as a pair of birds sat on the same branch,
looking out, silent before one pushed off,
flew across the water.
The other waited swaying
with the force of this leaving,
then pushed off itself until the branch was bare
still moving with their absence;
and who is to say,
now that the branch has stopped its movement
and the river continues whispering
and the banks keep their failed embrace,
that my eyes, holding the stillness, are not alive
to the possibility that they are still there with me.
Jared Beloff is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023) and the co-editor of Poets of Queens 2 (Poets of Queens, 2024). His work can be found at AGNI, Baltimore Review, Image Journal, Pleiades and elsewhere. He is the Editor in Chief of Porcupine Literary. He is a teacher who lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two daughters. You can find him on his website, on Instagram, and on BlueSky.
Sandra Wilcoxon started painting in watercolor in 2020, and soon focused on Botanical Art. It is an exciting and challenging art form, depicting and interpreting nature in great detail. She loves texture and discovery and the discipline of daily sketching and practice, and finds it gratifying to see the work grow and evolve as she becomes better at combining paper, paint, pencil and pen to achieve the desired effect. Prior to developing her Botanical series, she worked in mixed media using beads and pearls woven into three-dimensional sculptures and statement jewelry. She’s also done quite a bit of drawing, printmaking and clay work. See more of Sandra’s work at www.skwilcoart.com or on Instagram.