CHELSEE MORRIS

FALL/WINTER 2022 ISSUE #05 POET

Chelsee Morris recently graduated from the State University of New York at Oswego with a Biology BA and Creative Writing minor and was the Head Fiction Editor at the Great Lake Review literary magazine for two years. Her writing is strongly influenced by love; for nature, identity, and community.

THE REEDS GOSSIP ABOUT SALMON MIGRATION

they think we’re silent
don’t they know there’s conversation in all things?
every year, salmon throwing bodies into unyielding tides
every year, we roil at them loud and unheard

what’s so good about this place anyway?
it’s just a stretch of water
just a riverbed of broken shells
if we could swim from our birthplace
instead of living by those who rot at our roots
we would never return

they fall apart before they lay the young they’ll never meet
this one, puckered by lamprey holes
that one, scales peeling like silver coins
home is where the start is, and the end
an anchor, a hook in the jaw, a dying dance of triumph