How Will We Speak Of It?

Joanna Hope Bricher

​Will the animals stay close out of love for us? Can we trust our neighbours
to have read the safety information? Do my dreams not speak for me?

How do we reimagine ourselves like the river rising to flood? (If I
stick to the instructions) am I not purity itself? Must memory &

imagination necessarily make poor bedfellows? How will
the conditions of the future be diagnosed? In what new

constellations might we understand our bodies?
Can we hope for a more perfect ending than

this? If we wait motionless long enough
on these rocks will we hear what

flows underneath? (No, it is a
smaller thing, closer to the

skin. And the senescent
beech trees say: are
​
we not on fire
for you
?)
​

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Joanna Hope Bricher studied at Dartington College of Arts and is now based in the North of England. She lives with chronic illness and loves trees and herons. Her work has appeared in Eunoia Review and Rogue Agent. You can see some of her linocut and letterpress printing at pennybloodpress.wordpress.com.