J. Bailey Hutchinson

J. Bailey Hutchinson is a poet, editor, and educator. She is originally from Memphis, Tennessee, where she obtained her BA in English literature from Rhodes College. While earning her MFA in poetry at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, she taught a wide range of writing courses, including Composition, Creative Nonfiction, and Creative Writing. She has also participated in several community-facing teaching initiatives, including WITS, the Open Mouth Literary Center, and the Brown Chair in Literacy’s outreach workshop program. Hutchinson is currently employed as an editorial assistant and bookseller at Milkweed Editions.

Hutchinson’s work has been published by Salamander, Beloit, Muzzle, BOAAT, and more. She was the 2016 recipient of the James T. Whitehead Creative Writing Endowment and the 2018 recipient of both the Felix Christopher McKean Memorial Award for Poetry and the Lily Peter Fellowship in Poetry, awarded by the University of Arkansas’ department of English in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences. Hutchinson was a finalist for Black Warrior Review’s 2017 Poetry Contest and Nimrod’s 2018 Writing Contest. She won First Prize in the 2018 New South Writing Contest. She is also the recipient of an arts grant from Artists 360. Source

Discourse

for Mary Oliver

What I want to say is what

I want to say. I ran the water

poach-hot, watched my shoulder

rose like a struck cheek. Because

something there. Unwinds. In the

way water slucks. In the seventh grade,

the first-chair trumpet never

looked at me and I loved him.

I put my foot through a wall. I didn’t

want anyone. To know. Me, peach-

softening in the bleachers. Me, lush,

as a honey-sick ermine. I nearly

bit my mom in half. How’d I get me

into this? Saying palm-puddled

daisyleaf in place of sorry. It’s not

like shattered drywall is some easier

words—because I had to caulk it all back

myself. It’s maybe that I won’t believe

words lack feet. And fur. I’m not in this

to be misunderstood, though I was.

Before. Distracting with a wrecked beanfield,

or gargled-up okra stuff–but now

I mean it when I say I’m willful

as yogurt in the sunshine. How it’s

made slow cheese. Look, I wrote a poem

to tell you something genuine. Though.

It doesn’t always seem that way. I still

believe folding a fisheye in lardo and salt

is the best way for you to feel the dream

that sucked sleep out of me. So. I sit down

with the green of many slick frogs. The sharp

and insufficient air of a mountainside.

The eatable gouda rind. What I think

was buck last night, groaning like a ship.

Published:

2022

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Childhood & Coming of Age

Memory & The Past