Stefanie Kirby
Resistance
A metal womb is better than a branch, better than a womb clad in cedar or even asphalt shingles at sloughing off flames, which matters less once the frame below catches. Still, a womb on embers retains its structural integrity long after most surrounding trees have ashed out. Even after collapse, this womb blooms into blue heat.
Stefanie Kirby lives and writes along Colorado’s Front Range. Her debut chapbook, Fruitful, is the winner of the 2023 Adrift Chapbook Contest, forthcoming from Driftwood Press. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, and appear in The Massachusetts Review, The Maine Review, The Cincinnati Review, SAND, wildness, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.