top of page
Anita Olivia Koester
"I continue to believe that poetry remains one of our most vital reservoirs of reflection, solace, and outrage within a world replete with horrors."
-David St. John
POEM EXCERPT
The murky river settles into my eyes,
my mouth rejects, then accepts the water,
fish slip against my skin.
A stone at my throat,
another tied round my ribcage,
a rope—familiar—
slices into my wrists. The dead
do not grieve the death of others.
As I sink, I think—
God is an elegy the world writes.
It’s what makes the concept so beautiful.
The way time is beautiful: brief and endless.
-from "Elegy for the Almost Drowned"
Published in South Dakota Review
bottom of page