Kristina Erny

Kristina Erny is an American third-culture poet and artist who grew up in South Korea. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona. Her work has been the recipient of the Tupelo Quarterly Inaugural Poetry Prize and the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Award, and a finalist for the Coniston Prize appearing in The Los Angeles Review, Yemassee, Blackbird, and Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals. She currently lives in Shanghai, China, where she teaches at an international school with her husband and three children.

What the Tree Teaches Us

In the middle and all through,

the trees. Old whirring things.

And in the in-between between

their leaves, time, pinched up.

What falls is not forgotten,

only traded for another sun.

Who else spoke the language

of death from life first?

And did anyone see the green thread

trail into the dirt,

then trellis up

as morning glory?

Read more of Kristina’s work in her full-length chapbook, Elijah Fed by Ravens, and Solum Journal Volume III.