Two Poems by Julia Anna Morrison

ANSWER

We cook fish in the dark. All day I think
today is yesterday.  

I soak a video in saltwater. There I return to
the inky sea of childhood. 

There is nothing to eat. Spring falls
in layers: first the naked green pills,
then the trees aching with blossoms.

The duration of images, of night faced down.

Stars blot the pillowcase – an illness, an artform. 
Image without image.

I can no longer smell anything but snow
even with these flowers soaking the yard.

Scroll the static between recordings. What exists 
in that space: the electricity before sputtering out
the image of a family I no longer know. 

Someone calls out for mama. And I turn. 
I always turn towards that sound which is also a light. 

GROCERY LIST


I got the beginning wrong.
It starts with night, ovulation in the kitchen.

My face is sinking. Gorge of rock and twin.

Shelves of granite reveal after the flood,
exposed coral and byozoa.

I drill holes in the videotapes of childhood
where the film is taped over. 

I want to put memory back in my body, 
watery and glittered with all its errors. 

Being pregnant is so mundane, and yet. 

I am at the grocery store and I am already mad,
squeezing peaches, weighing a dozen apples. 

The light in the film is appearing. The sound
is temporary. Aisles of reel. Erosion. Aftermath. 

I will make a film out of my body. 

Julia Anna Morrison is a writer and filmmaker from Atlanta, Georgia. Her book of poems, Long Exposure, was published in 2023 and her work has recently appeared in Best American Poetry and is forthcoming in The Georgia Review. Anna teaches at the University of Iowa. Find her at www.juliaannamorrison.com or @snorkelmaiden.

20 January 2025