Dayna Patterson
DAYNA PATTERSON is the author of If Mother Braids a Waterfall, winner of the 2020 Association for Mormon Letters Poetry Award. Her second poetry collection, O Lady, Speak Again, is forthcoming from Signature Books in 2023. She is the founding editor in chief of Psaltery & Lyre and curates Poetry + Fungus in her spare time. daynapatterson.com.
Second Place: Our Lady of Innumerable Appellatives
Articles/Essays – Volume 55, No. 4
Listen to the Out Loud version of the poem here. Enter into Her gates with thanksgivingand into Her courts with praise.—Psalm 100:4 1.Swirl of gold gleaming in our daughters’ eyes.Amen. Whorl of cirrostratus haloingthe moon.…
Read moreGod the Mother Speaks of Salt
Articles/Essays – Volume 55, No. 1
Podcast version of this piece. I baptized you before you were born. After, rubbed you clean.I’ll cleanse all your wounds in season. You’ve forgottenhow to savor my holy. If you seek,you’ll find these veins run…
Read moreGod the Mother Speaks of Xenia
Articles/Essays – Volume 55, No. 1
Podcast version of this piece. I AM the children sleeping under mylar in a Texas warehouse.I AM the fathers lifting toddlers to their shoulders on our journeyto safety and rest. I’m safety and rest. But…
Read moreBook of Life, for Timothy Liu
Articles/Essays – Volume 55, No. 1
Podcast version of this piece. If there is a literal bookon a plinth of filigreed gold, and an angelstanding as sentinel at heaven’s needle-eye entrance, who’s not to sayour names appear etchedon its pages, un-erasable.…
Read moreGod the Mother Speaks of Hearts
Articles/Essays – Volume 55, No. 1
Podcast version of this piece. won’t you agree with me the heart’s a glorious organ moon jelly a ghost heart throbbing in oceanlily bulb an earth heart humming undergroundbear a furred heart curled up in cave’s dark I’m…
Read moreAfter the Curtain Falls, Isabella Speaks in Achromatics
Articles/Essays – Volume 51, No. 3