Gabrielle Myers

The Creek and Bamboo Forest

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.
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We hid in bamboo forests, thin trunks, boney branches.
Translucent leaves caught in our curls.
We longed to lose our eight and ten-year-old selves
Within dense stems, pitch our bullied bodies under leaf litter,
Transform into Barbie or the tan, blond girls whose parents drove Mercedes and Porsches.

In the humid cave of a Virginia summer,

We landed wood planks leftover from Mom’s raised beds,

Pitched them across the wide creek with knee-sized quartz boulders.

Rain-raised water threatened our sneakers worn from miles of road runs,

Our ankles felt a cool splash as we maneuvered to avoid grey clay’s

Shoe suck. We bent to pick up water-heavy clay,

Slabbed it on planks, smoothed it with our small palms,

Sculpting a pathway across what could flood

In a summer thunderstorm, take us in

Undertow.

I watched your face’s concentration, the space between your eyes’ pull together,

How you pressed your lips, held in breath.

We covered our clay path in moss we collected from creek’s side,
Pressed giving green against moldable clay,
Walked across our bridge with bare feet just to feel a softness, an enfolding, moss’s safe holding.
I prayed that the girls in pink Polo shirts at our school
Would stop making fun of you for your curly hair, your shyness,

Your face-in-a-book curiosity,
Your hand-me-downs from cousin Stacy.

I wanted to be big, popular, unafraid so I could tell them to stop;
When they didn’t, I wanted to push them down
Into the mud puddle that formed after a rainstorm next to the go-round,

Make them regret their meanness, make them be kind to you;

I wanted to bridge us to be in control of our lives, our joys,

Like we had when we felt bliss in our toes

As our digits swam in moss’s cool cushion that tingled

Our feet to feel movement’s force.

Gabrielle Myers is a writer, professor, and former chef. Her memoir Hive-Mind details her time of love, awakening, and tragic loss on an organic farm. Her first poetry book, Too Many Seeds, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. Her second poetry book, Break Self: Feed, was published in 2024, and her third and fourth poetry books, Points in the Network (2025) and Go Forth: Lose Yourself into Life (2026), are forthcoming from Finishing Line. Her poetry has been published in the Atlanta Review, The Evergreen Review, The Adirondack Review, San Francisco Public Press, Fourteen Hills, pacificREVIEW, Connecticut River Review, Catamaran, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Sand Hills, Al Dente, Cathexis Northwest Press, and the American Poetry Review. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera writes about her poetry: “Gabrielle Myers does not shy away from a kind of post-mod naturalism, where we can taste things, see things, and even – I daresay – touch their ‘opalescent crisp skin.’…She manages a lush 21st century personal pointillism. Most lovely, most alluring.” Gabrielle is the Farm-to-Fork columnist for Inside Sacramento magazine. Visit her website at www.gabriellemyers.com.