New Poetry by Kim Malinowski

Painted Canyon

Jagged stone,
fashioned by forgotten gods.
Time and water—eroding sunset,
stratigraphy bared by millennia. 

How does water form such wonder?

I hear the wind blowing 
five miles away,
feel it six minutes later.
Hair tangling,
there is no taming anything here.

Sitting on the rim,
listening to five o’clock crickets,
I could topple and be happy.
Sediments call to me.
I taste wildness,
ancient breeze.
Time changes the canyon each moment,
each moment the canyon changes me.

Water wears me away,
peels back layers.
My bluffs, my peaks.
The sun sets, 
shadows lengthen,
my hair molten.

My footsteps scarcely memory,
shard of the canyon’s history.


- © Kim Malinowski 2020

Kim Malinowski earned her B.A. from West Virginia University and her M.F.A. from American University. She studies with The Writers Studio. Her chapbook Death: A Love Story was published by Flutter Press. Her work was featured in Faerie Magazine and appeared in War, Literature, and the Arts, Mookychick, Amethyst Review, and others.