Samantha Malay - Harvest

Samantha Malay’s impeccable “Harvest” is a poem cultivated in the wild liminal space between seed and bounty, between a sort of reckless solitude and something communal. Like the poem’s envelope which holds more than words, which holds the promises of peaches and plums, this poem is itself a work of promise, of something only temporarily adrift but which will take root in days to come. “Set in small towns and remote mountain woods, my work is a long glance at isolation, stark natural beauty, and the debris fields of family life,” Samantha explained to The Dewdrop.

Harvest

back out of the driveway
windows rolled down
a map of each room in your mind
we are equal parts empty and full
together and alone
the space between the beads and the string

open the envelope
it holds more than words
seeds unsuited to our season of drought
promises of peaches and plums
from branches grafted to a single trunk

keep your horse from the quarry ridge
eat peas from dried vines
crouch in the shallows with creekwater mint
you are rootless and lucky for now

Samantha Malay

Samantha Malay’s poetry was recently published in Heading In and Out: Transient Life Poems (Poets’ Choice, 2024) and Mantis. Steel Toe Books short-listed her chapbook Realm (2023), and Shark Reef Magazine nominated her poem “Between” for a Pushcart Prize (2020). She grew up in rural northeastern Washington state, where her family built a cabin with timbers salvaged from an abandoned homestead, hauled water from a creek, and read by kerosene lamp. Her experiences in that time and place continue to shape her work. Her published words can be found at https://samanthamalay.com/.