Bernard Ferguson

Jun 11, 2023 | kenyonreview.org | Nickole Brown |Fleda Brown |Jennifer Sperry Steinorth |Bernard Ferguson

Nickole Brown is the author of Sister and Fanny Says. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she volunteers at several animal sanctuaries. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of poems about these animals, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and Brown’s essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020.

Jun 11, 2023 | kenyonreview.org | Cindy Juyoung Ok |Bernard Ferguson

The Kenyon Review · Leave Her To HeavenIt was, for us, a city of proxies. You counted your prospective ailments, awaiting your healthby planning its loss. Elsewhere, cicadas were backand secret parties were cast, but we watched the thick river pass around us, synecdoche for its humanpollutants, and we tended the swell of gray weeds that was nevertheless a garden.