Ethan Richmond
golden shovel, on starch
We are full of starch, my small white fellows. We grow.
It hurts at first.
—Sylvia Plath
tight bones loosen into night. we
are prayed for by tired mothers. they, now, are
rummaging heavy-eyed and full
of green love. their basin of
trajectory. warm velocities. like starch.
poured over and again our bodies. my
god, we are so small.
and feel yet how very far we go. moon-Black
fellows,
a great plume unbeknown to what depth we
give the sky. i did not mean for this poem to grow
as it
has, but so much hurts
and i want to remember at
simple last what comes after, and first.
Ethan Richmond is a poet and dancer currently working as the Development Assistant for AILEY. They were the recipient of the Celebrate! Maya Angelou Poetry Fellowship from the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and are published in singer-songwriter Kevin Atwater’s Achilles Literary Collection. Ethan has danced and/or read poetry at NYU Tisch, TOTAH, Triskelion Arts, Martha Graham Studio Theater, The Tank, Bennington College, the Grand Ole Opry, and Williams College, where they graduated cum laude as the Class Poet.