Poetry

Kaitlyn Airy, a Korean American poet and fiction writer, was a finalist in the 2021 Narrative 30 Below Contest. Raised on a small island in the Salish Sea, she lives in Charlottesville and is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Virginia.

Consanguinity

by Kaitlyn Airy
This is what       it must have sounded like       in the hollow of her:
a timbre       not unlike a hushed beach fire       blue with salt
faint hiss of smoke scorched sand       eelgrass
among coals       uprooted from the deep fissure       where they forested
whole shoals of fish;       not to be mistaken
for tenderness       merely       a place of holding
This is a premium subscription story. Please make a $4 donation to access the individual story or a $50 donation to access all the stories in Narrative Backstage for a period of one year.

If you are already a user, but not yet logged in, you may login here.
If you are new to Narrative, signing up is FREE and easy.
The password field is case sensitive. Account & Password Help.
Joining Narrative gives you FREE access to thousands of stories, poems and essays. It’s easy:
PLEASE ENTER A VALID EMAIL ADDRESS.
PLEASE NOTE: We are discontinuing our support of Microsoft-related addresses, including msn.com, live.com, outlook.com, and hotmail.com, and we ask that you use an alternative address, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, fastmail.com, comcast.net, verizon.com, icloud.com, or other.

We have found Microsoft-related email addresses to be sometimes inconsistent in terms of delivering messages, and we want to make sure that you can access your account and reliably receive messages that you have requested.
Email Preferences
Email Preferences