Velvet Variations (an excerpt)

There is cobalt in the coat

of the growing antler, so the invisible essence of

velvet is always blue.

In velvet, the yearling knows

the tenderness of his crown: hides. See the thicket’s

milky azure haze.

Scraped onto a tree, velvet

merges with lettuce lung, turns lichen’s green to

aquamarine: the bluish.

[...]

Rose DeMaris is a writer and teacher. Her poems appear in New England Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Image, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She received Orison Books’ Best Spiritual Literature Award in Poetry and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in Montana. rosedemaris.com