An Indentation of Love’s Thumb by Loralee Clark

 

Ebahir

An Indentation of Love’s Thumb

knows the balancing places,

feeds itself on dulcet drones of insects,

thick and sweet

moon’s light, grey twinnings of nerve and

other delicate matter,

articulating memory which is not memory;

gaps of calm and willingness to hear the beginning.

She cleaves the heart signifying deep knowing,

comes in dreaming,

its infinite and hidden grace heating itself 

from the fire of aimless, puzzling pockets.

This pockmark is etched on the inside of an elbow,

between furrowed brows and on the delicate skin

of the earlobe,

perfectly curves against the left hip bone.

Memory grazes remembering and sinks into

unconsciousness, not needing language.

© Loralee Clark

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Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark has a fourth chapbook forthcoming, Neolithic Imaginings: Mythical Explorations of the Unknown (Kelsay Press, 2026).  Clark has been nominated for three 2026 Pushcart Prizes.  She resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. Her Substack, which focuses on the process of creativity, is nosuchthingasfailure.substack.com.

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Stories Sung by Loralee Clark

 

Simon Berger

Stories Sung

each all

hallowed

honey    bumble   sweat 

buzz   harvest   imparts

pollinates   flys

with others       with themselves       with humanity      with time

to braid to lead to impart to incubate

the dance progeny biodiversity swarms

protect provide

ecosystems colonies 

futures

holy

© Loralee Clark

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Loralee Clark

 Loralee Clark’s latest chapbook, Solemnity Rites (Prolific Pulse Press, 2025), is an account of reimagined myths and truths of who we are as humans and how we live our histories. She has been published most recently in Periwinkle Pelican, White Stag Journal, Chewers by Masticadores, Nude Bruce Review, Lucky Leaves, Everscribe, The Rockford Review, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine. Loralee resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. 

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A Conversation by Loralee Clark

David Olivares

A Conversation  

(—for Angela Carroll-Wallace and Listening to Mother) 

She begins with branches that curve, 

whispering an entry-way, 

focal point

and moves each one

from the loam and litter,

thin with hope

that others will see

with more than their eyes.

Spindly fibers, less supple

serve as cording, sure and thick

encasing

connections to meditations,

to being led to a knowing

400 million years in the making.

To a pulsing brain beneath her feet

rife with stories and lineages,

intuition which was alive

before settling in her body

as she builds a physical bridge;

an honoring to fungi teaching trees to root,

anaerobic teaching aerobic to breathe

cell building cell, adapting, evolving.

Her inhalation, their exhalation

life and death in beautiful dance;

a celebration in renewal

as the cording and curving are created.

There is sustenance in death,

strings of brown leaves tied,

spinning in the wind like waves

on a shore, light spilling through: 

a mystery and the knowing of a secret.

Each season is a heartbeat,

a whorl and expansion of tissue 

in a stalk of wood,

that gives itself over and over again;

to learn and luxuriate in commune, in

symbiosis, in contentment.

Remember: we make a cairn to 

convey a message

but each stone

sitting upon the other

tells its own. 

© Loralee Clark Enjoy more posts by Loralee Clark HERE.

Loralee Clark

 Loralee Clark’s latest chapbook, Solemnity Rites (Prolific Pulse Press, 2025), is an account of reimagined myths and truths of who we are as humans and how we live our histories. She has been published most recently in Periwinkle Pelican, White Stag Journal, Chewers by Masticadores, Nude Bruce Review, Lucky Leaves, Everscribe, The Rockford Review, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine. Loralee resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark. 

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The Woods: A Prologue by Loralee Clark

 

Matheus Bertelli

The Woods: A Prologue

In all my memories I am eight.

In spring, I walk past the boulders (no yelling)

piled at the edge of the back lawn, (no judgement)

out to the sinkhole filled with water,

inky with leaf tannins, to pretend

I was fishing; stick in hand (no baiting)

to flip the stacks of leaves at (no traps)

the bottom, pollywogs darting away.

In summer, years upon years of pine needles

cushioning the ground, (no slamming doors)

leading the way to a neighbor’s house; even 

if I was off by a few minutes, (no slapping)

I still got out to the other side.

I was never lost.     

In winter, the snowmobile tracks behind

the Cook’s trailer, curving in arcs through (no loneliness)

their property, ours, and the Holt’s.  Miles 

of mechanical doodling.

Once the ponds froze over, Stacy, Stephen 

and I would skate, avoiding the dried clumps of grass

sticking up through the ice; coming in (no martyrdom)

only when we could no longer

feel our toes and the dusk

made it hard to see. (no shouting)

In the woods: freedom,

imagination, tools for important work.  (no neglect)

Calming, predictable through the seasons

but surprising when a bird perched close, (no threats)

when a ladybug would land, when I saw 

a piece of wood chewed by a porcupine. (no intentional

                                                                        silence)

"The Woods: A Prologue" is from A Harmony in the Key of Trees: A Healing Myth (Dancing Girl Press).

© Loralee Clark

Enjoy more posts by Loralee Clark HERE.

Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark.  She has a book forthcoming this year, Solemnity Rites, with Prolific Pulse Press LLC, and has most recently been published in Periwinkle Pelican, White Stag Journal, Chewers by Masticadores, Nude Bruce Review, Lucky Leaves, Everscribe, The Rockford Review, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine.

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University of Maine, 1992 by Loralee Clark

David Bertus

University of Maine, Winter 1992 

One night 

I studied long at Fogler Library, floor 1 B, 

the in-between cramped floor 

basketball players chose to never access  

and the claustrophobic readily avoided, 

housing relic journals of geochemistry

crammed ceiling to floor.  

Wedged along the left side 

sat individual desks, one of which

I hunched over for hours 

studying information long since rendered obsolete.

 

At half past eleven or perhaps midnight 

the work-study student announced

the library was closing;

I hurried to pull down the pant legs 

of my long underwear, tuck them 

into my wool socks, stuff my feet 

into my boots, pull my thick, wool sweater 

over my head, wind my scarf around my neck, 

pull my hat on and shove my hands 

into my driving mittens after having packed 

my books and notebooks, pens and highlighters 

into my red backpack with the Esprit polar bear pin 

on the front pocket under the reflective strip.

 

As I entered the three-foot gap 

between the interior, warm library sanctum

and cold, outer world, the temperature 

dropped at least 40 degrees:

expected. I inhaled the sharp tang of cold wet.  

As I pushed through the door into the night 

 

I was engulfed in hush and softness;

my mouth refused to close, smiling wide,

as under the pink-streetlight tinge of air 

lay several feet of snow.  It hadn’t been

predicted, could not have been observed 

from the windowless library floor; 

I stood stunned as soft flakes fell all around me, 

as weather that only exists in winter 

moved through me like a ghost.

 

Only the snowflakes,

the humid ring of light hovering around the street lamps 

and I, existed.

© Loralee Clark

Enjoy more posts by Loralee Clark HERE.

Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark.  She has a book forthcoming this year, Solemnity Rites, with Prolific Pulse Press LLC and has been published most recently in Periwinkle Pelican, White Stag Journal, Chewers by Masticadores, Nude Bruce Review, Lucky Leaves, Everscribe, The Rockford Review, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine.

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Mending by Loralee Clark

 

Yan Krukau

Mending

 

Another evening, another ignorant of memory 

comes clad in porch light 

to trade paper money for poultice:  

medicine for medicine.  

 

The child struggles with her tongue’s weight 

not to curse her mother’s yellow life—

good enough to heal in secret, not good enough

for light of day.  

She hovers above her mother, 

having answered death’s call herself, 

having listened to the history contained in her flesh, 

having shown the world who she is 

and believes her mother is only filling the world with 

duplicity upon duplicity.  

Who can be comfortable with a heart full of lies?

 

Afternoons, in the garden, her mother strips the comfrey leaves

laying them in the basket atop the lavender and thyme.  

As she makes her way into the kitchen

her hips ache and the limping begins.  

She steps into the kitchen; at the table, 

penciling out the scene of a forest, her daughter 

begins a tentative beat and absent-minded humming. 

It is a gift, a small pathway into her daughter’s heart. 

 

The pestle and mortar, green with use, wait on the counter 

for her to grind the comfrey to elixir.  

These hands that soothed the girl’s aches, 

that braided her fine hair, are aged now-- 

deep channels and love’s softness.  

With them, she pulls the leaves apart, 

picks the needles of thyme 

sprinkles them into the mortar, 

breathing their dark warmth.  

She uses her daughter’s tune to sing a song of earth, 

of leaves rotting to fertility, 

of all that ties us to life.

 

Truth shines brighter with time

and her mother waits patiently

in between the shadows.

© Loralee Clark

Enjoy more posts by Loralee Clark HERE.

Loralee Clark

Loralee Clark resides in Virginia; her website is sites.google.com/view/loraleeclark.  She has a book forthcoming this year, Solemnity Rites, with Prolific Pulse Press LLC and has been published most recently in Periwinkle Pelican, White Stag Journal, Chewers by Masticadores, Nude Bruce Review, Lucky Leaves, Everscribe, The Rockford Review, and Soul Poetry, Prose and Art Magazine.

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