https://sweetlit.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/AmongVariousLivesbyLisaZimmerman.m4a

Among Various Lives

This version has no soldiering father, no mother
muttering in the dark bedroom, gin-stoked
into daily rants and hungered sleep, no
big-eyed sister, no sullen brother.
This version sprang from pond water,
green gleam and mud-slipped,
ancestored by a new moon, Saturn
smoking on the galaxy’s back step
and so many far-flung stars
all of them dead and still dazzling.


Lisa Zimmerman earned her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many journals including Apple Valley Review, The Sun, Poet Lore, Cave Wall, Ghost Parachute, Hole in the Head Review, and Vox Populi Sphere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net, the Orison Anthology, five times for the Pushcart Prize, and included in the 2020 Best Small Fictions anthology. Her poetry collections include How the Garden Looks from Here (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Award), The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press) The Hours I Keep and Sainted (both from Main Street Rag). She’s a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Northern Colorado.

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