Rachel Turney

 

Rachel Turney, Ed.D. (she/her) is an educator and artist located in Denver. Her poems, research articles, reviews, and drawings can be found in a variety of publications. Rachel is passionate about immigrant rights, teacher support, and empowering other artists. She is a Writers’ Hour prize winner and Best of the Net nominee. Her photography appears on a few magazine covers. Rachel runs the popular online reading series Poetry (in Brief). She is on staff at Bare Back Magazine with her monthly column Friday Night in the Suburbs. She reads for The Los Angeles Review. Website: turneytalks.com Instagram: @turneytalks Bluesky: rachelturney

 

Echoes 

 

What joy in your treble voice

to match my song and carry 

through this large house of 

echoes. Your little murmured 

words to me, laughter, and 

quiet moans. 

 

Look at me with your 

Worcestershire eyes that drip

little curls of fern fronds 

reflecting stone shores and 

dark skies. 

 

Caffeine sunrise and whiskey

sunsets from the brick porch. 

I call and ask you to water my 

succulent garden while I am 

in Mexico walking in gardens

of succulents that belong to 

someone else. 

Volcano Island 

 

Standing by the blockade yelling “Don’t Fire!”

Singing about a bluebird to let you know I am 

human. 

 

Toes pointed into a pool of milky blue surrounded 

by black            volcano sand. 

 

Terrain of moss and seafoam, delightful shore birds 

and empty wombs or nests that I want to fill with 

diamonds for safe keeping of                            my riches. 

 

Exquisite sunset like blood orange over my tongue, 

citrus in             my wounds. 

 

Lacerated ameba, stave off the consequences. 

Melodramatic poison dart frog leaping across 

my skin. 

 

Miles of uninterrupted strand and porous fields of 

poppy flowers remind me that I too am a grain, 

a seed, a little splash of water in the                            vast ocean.