Melissa Barrett earned a BA from Wittenberg University and an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2012, and her poem set “Thigh Gap and Other Poems” won First Place in Narrative’s Sixth Annual Poetry Contest. Her collaborations with visual artist Pete Burkeet have been exhibited in film festivals in New York and Vancouver. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, and teaches at an urban public middle school.

Kicking Bear and Short Bull Give Their Testimony

by Melissa Barrett

Charge the ground till it glitters, volcanic—

It was God’s pleading in that rink

                                  a petition to dance, your parachute           Dirt

        filled his nails and

                                               salmon bled from his fingers

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