sometimes, forest

Set in the coastal temperate rainforest, the poems in sometimes, forest alternatively rail at and desire a beloved who is sometimes forest, sometimes lover, friend, mother, or the absent aspect the speaker yearns for in herself. The forest, though, continues foresting, existing as a space of its own, independent of the speaker’s wants or needs, simultaneously a place of refuge and a place of harm or mistake where bodies periodically appear and disappear. Returning day after day to the same woods, the speaker notices minute seasonal changes and considers her own internal changes, too. Meanwhile, fires, heat domes, and landslides mirror the hormonal heat and biological surges compelling these urgent conversations. Considering how networks of lateral support mitigate and challenge hierarchical, individualistic structures, sometimes, forest develops a theory of hylofeminism (“hylo” from the Greek meaning “woods” or “forest matter”) that attends to a deep, communal connection with nature as a relational way of being with the self and the more-than-human world.