The Green Condition

The best blackberries I’ve ever eaten grow under the complex A-frame of an electrical tower. The span of towers cuts a narrow slit of field between two dark sets of woods.Brambles grow between and up the metal legs.

Arm hairs stand vertical when you’re there, and you can hear the power humming the whole time.                                    

PRAISE

I enjoyed every moment of this melancholy, often uncanny spell in the wilderness: its weird rhythm of attention, its wry humor, its many surprises, and its replacement of the absent beloved with language so beautiful that at times I simply wished I’d written it.

– Maggie Nelson

Elizabeth J. Colen is the author of poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Steel Toe Books, 2010) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies (Jaded Ibis Press, 2012), as well as flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake (Rose Metal Press, 2011). She lives in Seattle.

LINKS/NEWS

Review in Entropy Magazine

Review in Quail Bell Magazine