CNF: Come Back
by Robin Turner
It’s spring & I’m thinking of the things that come back—macrame & low-rise blue jeans, the scissortails & the ruby throats, wild primrose & thistle & thyme. I have seen them. Old gospel songs & Polaroids, the first & the last days of school, &—so they tell us—Jesus. I am waiting for the coming of some late summer rain, the return of the red resurrection flower, its strong-tender stem, its intricate blossom a year’s dark, deepening. I am waiting for my mother.
Robin Turner is the author of the chapbook bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press). Her poems, prose poems, and flash fiction appear in DMQ Review, Rattle, Rust + Moth, The Texas Observer, Bracken Magazine, and in many other journals, anthologies, and community poetry projects. Her work has been honored with nominations for Best Spiritual Literature, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Currently a poetry reader for Sugared Water, she lives with her husband near White Rock Lake in Dallas, Texas.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Come Back”? I came upon a photograph my husband took of a brilliant red spider lily, common in Texas. They tend to appear after a heavy rain in late summer/early fall. The flower is also known by other names–among them “corpse flower” and “resurrection flower”. The poem gathered in me pretty quickly as I contemplated my mother’s late summer death last year, what returns and what does not, cannot–though something in us continues to call Come back.
Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.
Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.
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Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
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