Kinds of Stillness
*
the egret leans windward
beak poised for stabbing
shadows in the reeds
*
her eyes: milky panes
between dream and confusion
staring/not staring
*
as a child I thought
sitting rock-still I could
make time stop
*
the pen’s nib hovers
above the line a hummer’s
electric wingbeats
*
the gap between tracks
on a vinyl record
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange (Willow Books) and winner of the 2019 Yeats Poetry Prize. Her forthcoming books are To the Bone (Sundress Publications, 2020) and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Recent work appears in POETRY, Missouri Review, and TriQuarterly. A graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and Ragdale Foundation. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently lives in Delray Beach, South Florida.