Erica Bodwell

Bio: Erica Bodwell is a poet and attorney who lives in Concord, New Hampshire. Her full-length manuscript, Crown of Wild, was a finalist for the 2018 Four Way Books Larry Levis Prize and won the Two Sylvias Press 2018 Wilder Prize. It was released in September 2020. Her chapbook, Up Liberty Street, was released in March 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and have appeared in VerseDaily, Beloit, Spoon River Review (Editor's Prize 2nd Runner Up), North American Review (James Hearst Poetry Prize finalist), PANK and other journals. Her website is ericasoferbodwell.com.

I Met a Girl and Sparks Flew

from her fingertips to my fingertips ran up my wrists elbows followed the blazes of my shoulder blades then threaded each rib’s rung surfed swells of hip flexors the rise and fall of each quadricep circled the small coin of each kneecap then dropped like an anchor to land hard at my achilles’ before climbing each foot’s arch and
jumped from my ten toes back into her toes wound around the planes of her shins hills of her calves followed each hamstring the abundant rise of cheeks to join at her tailbone into a wide willow-banked river that flowed up her spine through her heart’s midline and into her mouth
where it pooled and waited until I leaned across the garden bench put my hands in her hair and kissed her there among the lupines  

The Answer

when he asks leaning back on the pillow how’s your sexual satisfaction lately i’m thinking of the oK glacier
& the photos of people standing knee-deep
in water & iceland’s loss our loss& i bring myself back to the bed how to answer
it’s not a theoretical question considering
we just had sex i’m thinking thinking of a podcast the guest spoke the word
rematriation rematriation
means back to mother earth a returnto our origins to life and co-creation a reclamation of the life-giving force
of the divine female he’s waiting for my answer
all soft & sleepy i love him fiercely & love our chemistry in all its manifestations orgasmic or not
cozy or hot i feel so grounded
in this longish second marriage this ecosystem free from tallying transactions we’ve slid pretty seamlessly
into our second decade & so i give an honest answer
my sexual satisfaction is fine good uncomplicated the moon my hormones let me know when the tide’s come in it’s not the best answer it doesn’t depend on his hands
tongue [but oh those hands tongue] it’s oK i tell him we’re all melting babe we’re all warming in another decade it’ll be even hotter

This Earth

embedded under my fingernails & betweenmy toes as we drive north & I try to explain what it feels like: my sometimes desire to include others & that time in the woods when my hand slid into your jeans & you collapsedagainst the tree & there were ladyslippers & thin green blades of underbrush.That earth beneath us & ice skating on the pondoutside your door when we were secret& just this morning our Lab taking big bitesout of the freshly manuered & composted bedslike she’s sidled up to the bar, you said, tellingthe day’s earth-story at the lake, frothing with whitecaps in May. & the way the top-heavy geranium
we brought your mother tipped over & spilled into the pine needles & our foreheadstouching as we sorted needles from soil & your ink& triceps flexing in your Second Gentlemant-shirt, gently but ruthlessly unearthing endless lily of the valley one shoot at a time, picking them up & putting them down like you do me on certain summer afternoons, after a sweaty hike & shared outdoor shower with maple helicopters spinning & an ice cube between your teeth. Puttingthem down where they’re protected from their longingto roam, giving them space to maybe blossom into a white-belled spring carpet, coveringthat place where grass refused to grow.

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