Under a Half Moon
Alicia Elkort
A cluster of spiders
spins a tangled filament
a pigment that pretends
otherwise.
A child ages—again
the long bone calcifies.
What can a woman’s grief
intend that we don’t already know?
She takes her light-bearing
body, lays herself
inside of a mistruth
looks out the window
wonders how she became driftwood,
how she blew
in opposing directions
& how the salty shadow
of a kit fox came to haunt
her wounds.
Alicia Elkort‘s third book of poetry, Bitterroot, won the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Prize and will be published in 2026. Her first book, A Map of Every Undoing, was published by Stillhouse Press, and her chapbook Disturb the Bones was published by Dancing Girl Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, and Orison Anthology nominee, Alicia’s poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies. For more info: https://aliciaelkort.mystrikingly.com/
Table of Contents for A Formal Feeling