Elizabeth Schmuhl

#40

I stopped using the Internet years ago. All of the places I wanted to go weren’t there. Now the fig. Now the peach. And when I want to be away from the orchard, I go to the river and the river feeds me.

Some days I miss the web and start feeling low. I go to the barn where the air is thick with straw and heat. I climb the ladder to the swallow nests.

I dance until sweat turns my tank top transparent, until my underwear clings to my thighs. My sweat evaporating, turning me more into me, disappearing.

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Elizabeth Schmuhl is a multidisciplinary artist whose work appears in Word Riot, Paper Darts, Michigan Quarterly Review, Phantom, and elsewhere. Presto Agitato (Zoo Cake Press), her first full length book, will be printed in a limited edition, chapbook version by Dancing Girl Press in Spring of 2016. See more at www.elizabethschmuhl.com.