the swan

Joshua Jones Lofflin

the swan

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Joshua Jones Lofflin’s writing has appeared in Apparition Lit, The Best Microfiction, The Best Small Fictions, The Cincinnati Review, CRAFT, SmokeLong Quarterly, and elsewhere. He lives in Maryland. Find him online at jjlofflin.com

Backstory: This poem originated in a generative workshop I took last spring. I’ve worked primarily as a prose writer, and I was eager to explore poetic forms in more depth. I often find myself paralyzed by how to formulate line breaks, so when our workshop leader led us in a shape poem exercise, I found the process suddenly freeing. I work professionally as a visual artist, and the intersection of textual and visual language especially appealed to me. It allowed me to intuit where to end lines quickly, without hesitation or over-analysis. For the first time, I felt like a poet, and the words moved through me.

Editor’s Notes & Image Credit: Photograph of the swan (by Jürgen from Pixabay)