San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
STATE LINES California Poetry
Jennifer Elise Foerster’s lyricism and apocalyptic vision make her new book, “Bright Raft in the Afterweather,” a must-read. The California depicted here, “split into an archipelago,” reveals the temporal expanse of her view. I suspect that perspective is also informed by Foerster’s family history; she’s a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. Despite her prophecy of a doomed future, she documents stunning details of the natural landscape before its vanishing. In this case, the songbirds, hackberry trees and a butterfly mysteriously named “Question.” Hoktvlwv is a spirit-figure in Foerster’s poetic world. Wise, feminine and elusive, Hoktvlwv serves as the book’s muse, appearing in many of Foerster’s poems, including the end of this one. There were still songbirds then nesting in hackberry trees and a butterfly named Question.
I remember ivy trembling at the vanishing point of your throat. Then the timelines crashed. California split into an archipelago. Orchards withered under blooms of ash. Now there is no nectar. No rotten fruit. The air is quiet.
Once, in Russia, Ornithologists trapped a population of hooded crows, transported them 500 miles westward. Winter came.
They never caught up with their flock. With crusts of calcified algae we catalogue each day lost: hot thermals, cirrus vaults, fistfuls of warblers hurtling into dark. There was no sound to the forgetting. We knew the heart would implode before the breath and lungs collapsed. That the world would end in snow, an old woman walking alone, empty birdcage strapped to her back.
From “Bright Raft in the Afterweather,” by Jennifer Elise Foerster. © 2018 The Arizona Board of Regents. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press. Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of “Leaving Tulsa” (2013) and “Bright Raft in the Afterweather” (2018), both published by the University of Arizona Press. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, she has lived in San Francisco since 2005.
David Roderick is the author of the poetry collections “Blue Colonial” and “The Americans.” He is co-founder of Left Margin Lit: A Home for the Literary Arts, in Berkeley.