KERRY McPHERSON

FALL/WINTER ISSUE #07 POET

Kerry McPherson is a poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker from a fishing village in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has dwelled in Hollywood for the past decade, making art, blowing seeds on the wind, hustling, and communing with the landscapes of California. Her first book of poetry, The Ecstatic Orphan (Cloud Publishing, Vancouver), came out in 2021. A poem therein has been turned into a ballad by Natalie Carol of Valley Queen, and just released on their new album, Chord of Sympathy. She is working on a rock opera, a film set in the Mojave Desert that will be her directorial debut. Her punk noir tv series, Baby Saigon, was the Honorable Mention for the Maven Screen Media Fellowship with Stowe Story Labs last year.

TOR

After the bog, we can stop,

but not before.

Once the gold leaf has been stripped by sleet

and the branch we lift

to the young moon

is bare.

Once we are sure of the swamp.

Once your last beard grows in red

and the Granny Smiths are ripe,

then we can climb the craggy hill.

Sitting on my black raincoat

we can lean in

and you can tell

again and again

about porcupine quills

asparagus by the can

cloves

and most important of all:

how marshes keep the world from being on fire.

I believe this. I trust in this.

Until we can share a green apple in the wind.