Tori Grant Welhouse

young :: ber :: ry

:: My sister pricked her finger on a brier.         She started
in her tiara, cussing.

:: Tough brambles sent up long, arching shoots that

rooted and embedded.

:: A prickly shrub infested her substrata,         cell by cell.

:: The nature of her hybridity,         from the genus Rubus
of the family of thorns.

:: What was jammed in her          dewberry eyes?

:: She wished for a different thorn,         something
with a racier point.

:: When she called, she already understood —
the drupelet seeds,         clustering malignancy.

:: We had the same phenomenal         parents.

:: She thought she could press for          lost time.

:: Time thought she could          press.

:: She thought press.         She thought could.

:: She lost                     what time                     she could.

Tori Grant Welhouse’s poems have appeared most recently in in HerWords and Chestnut Review, and she was a runner-up for the Princemere Prize. She won Skyrocket Press’s 2019 novel-writing contest for her YA fantasy The Fergus and Etchings 2020 poetry chapbook competition for Vaginas Need Air. Both are available on www.torigrantwelhouse.com,  Amazon and at indie bookseller Lion’s Mouth Bookstore. Tori is an active volunteer with Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets.