Artist Statement
y madrone currently lives in Chicago via Olympia, WA via Detroit, MI via Baku, Ahzerbaijan. She is working towards her MFA in Poetry at Columbia College Chicago where she received the Follett Fellowship. Her work has been published in the Detroit News, Wordspace, Slightly West, Mamaphiles and Mamazine. Her poem “geode” will hang in the Word: Type + Image show from January 19th – February 27th at Columbia College’s Hokin Gallery.
She waits and watches cars—pass, and slow and pass by.
Her shadow, elongated then shrunken, slumps into sweaty boots.
She resists the river. The sun’s sparkle on its surface, disguises the dark.
Through the slanted light, his blue truck pulls to a halt at her.
Saved from another sleepless night in that humid town, before she surrendered to the water’s chill.
Big hands on his slick wheel, a crooked smirk and switchy eyes—dirt caked to them both. And they bump down; the taffy highway stretching into heat. Until, he veers—
turns up dust in the bush and she white knuckles the door.
His don’t worry comes through after her what—where—why are you…
Her arm hairs bristling.
Ears loaded in hush.
The expectation of her worth. And she has no thing to offer.
A hawk shriek from a barren tree, gravel fracturing under pressure, the car broken-
handled door slam.
Squealing tires on asphalt.
Only old rail tracks run between, the river and the road—between towns too far apart. Her soles tripping in those cracks. Head twisted, staring, backwards—only water
beckoning.
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