Laura Schaffer

Laura Schaffer is a Virginia-born poet working at Belmont Abbey College. She completed her Appalachian Studies MA at Appalachian State in 2018 and her Boston University MFA in 2019, and she has published poetry in Appalachian Heritage, Raw Art Review, The Dewdrop, Wild Roof Journal, High Shelf, Barstow and Grand, Dappled Things, Blue Unicorn, Ekstasis, and St. Austin Review.

de profundis

Slow miracles are the most terrible.

Like fruit crushed to its globe upwelling.

The slosh and jammy splurge seem like ruin

from where I sit on the step, bruised and wondering

about the unasked price of wine.

Sometimes I sit there long enough to let the light,

cephalopod dapples of it through the leaves

and stained glass, travel down the wall,

down the same world where your crucifix hangs

in vinegar dark. I can see the cold, tickling squelch

shudder inside the bones of bleeding feet.

Your promise is the flow that holds its shape.

Rapids in mid-stride, mixed with honey,

resin, herbs. Maybe with cinnamon. 

Read Laura’s work and more in Solum Journal Volume V (forthcoming).