Sam Stokley is Ephemera's January Poet

(4 Poems & More)

Welcome readers!

We’re happy to introduce Sam Stokley, our selection for January’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Sam and everyone who submitted! If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:

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Introducing, Sam Stokley!

Writer Bio

Sam Stokley is a disabled artist and educator from Peoria, IL, living in Minneapolis. He teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at SPCPA, a high school for artists in downtown St. Paul. His writing lives, among elsewhere, in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Puerto del Sol, Fairy Tale Review, The Arkansas International, and has been Pushcart nominated. Dystrophies, a chapbook manuscript, was a finalist with BOAAT & Driftwood Presses, twice a semi-finalist in the Tomaž Šalamun prize, & longlisted by Frontier. Sam has Recessive Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa. Follow him on IG @bovinii.

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Artist Statement

“doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death” —Inger Christensen

I was born into the exclusive club of Butterfly Children, a title bestowed upon those with Epidermolysis Bullosa, a genetic skin disorder that leaves my skin, as per our communal moniker, as fragile as a butterfly’s wings. Blisters and weeping wounds are my oldest friends, and I’ve never felt much like a butterfly fluttering freely from sweetness to sweetness; instead, I feel, most often in daily life, trapped in the cocoon of my body, waiting for a metamorphosis that will never come.

Once you understand the genetic lottery, the other privileges that pervade our cosmopolitan globe scream until you can do nothing but respond to inequity. Poetry, to that end, can do more than exist on the page; when cops choose who lives and who dies based on skin color, or when a generation of children is slaughtered by one of the most powerful militaries in the world, what can words on a page do? The answer, in short, must be everything, or we do our art, and each other, a disservice.

The goal of poetry—of any art, truly—is to be freer. Poets live vigilant to the fetters of the world, treating each line as the critical swing from a hammer that could shatter the chains forged to keep us from illumination, transcendence.

When life is a privilege, art becomes revolutionary, every word is hope.

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Poems

Each issue of Ephemera spanning January will feature one poem from Sam Stokley. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year.

Poem 1 of 4

This) Enormity

My body makes me lie.
(Maybe yours, too, forces half-

truths.) The sandman each night
chooses bodily real

estate for an eruption of blisters
bigger than most can dream,

a blip in the end despite
their relative (to you,

to them, to anyone without
this) enormity.

Make a fist (be thankful
for joints, opposable

digits), thumb tucked
however you see fit. That

full of blood, hanging
off my body. Lance it, dam

a rose deluge.
It’s barely spring & already

I seek the cold, sterile rooms—
the intimacy of perfect conditions,

respiration rates steady,
out equaling in. A breeze.

We’re phototrophs
like cats or the boxed

vine searching for nearby
shine. As kids in a classroom

we duct-taped a seedling’s hole shut
and the green huddled into itself

before wilting, too knotted up
to find a way into ultra(violet.

From issue Jan.1 issue of Ephemera

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Poem 2 of 4

my body will never spring

wings and my proboscis
refuses to unfurl. i’ll never
rest on a ferrari
until a benevolent billionaire
brings me sugar water
for sponsored IG content.
no mason jar carries me
into a neon classroom
to die a deity, first
of her name. i’ll never
number in the thousands
to swallow a forest
in synchronized flutter.
my body will never
molt to final stage
and the chrysalis only
exists in my mind, but—

the windshield’s glare,
a prayer

Appears in the Jan.2 Issue

Poem 3 of 4

Prairie-locked

we learned

how to tell a coyote

from a wolf

from a person

all predators

who can’t help

but— 

The wolf sustains,

a lunar vibrato.

Coyotes yip,

scatter jagged.

And sapiens, we—

What I mean is I

hear the truth.

Appears in the Jan.3 Issue

Poem 4 of 4

Bloodstream

The other side of the moon is bleeding. Up
north fall bleeds through the edges
of summer and we await the salmon fly hatch
while families are met at purple midnight
with rap rap rap and steely screams. We bled
what we wanted but a vacuum is too useful
to leave behind so we unload fracturing.
What kind of fish did you catch? It’s personal.
I lied about the moon, up there blood
is tears, like how toilets flush the other way
down under. Everywhere is the middle
of a universe infinitely expanding. Some echoes
are a Tyson uppercut. The Mariana trench isn’t
a tourist pull like the Grand Canyon. Bigfoot is
enlightened and society changed when Dave
from Wendy’s dipped his fry into the big frosty sky.
For Halloween one year the White House gave
out chili-flavored fingers. Send us your tired,
your poor, your ten year olds to run
the drive-thru window at Burger King.
Kudzu is sought for its instagrammability,
if you ever leave the vines they lurch
towards your heart, glug glug rhythmic blood
pumping a gentle request for suffocation. My body began
decomposition before I burst out, my heart is still
heaving to keep me breathing, one morning I’ll wake
and leave my feet behind rotted off and dried, stuck
to the sheets. Gimme wheels and freely flipping
birds, rolling by the Spirit Halloween precincts
when we no longer pay for our bullies. A mayor comes
out of hiding to collect reelection money but his shadow
always follows, announcing two more years of cowardice.
Purple pockets crater opposability, time leaves
just fists. These luxury apartments on Dakota land
are progressive, home to our mayor’s biggest
supporters and everyone first on the menu. I’m in
the middle of my beloved villain storyline.
Skin is our biggest organ and I’ve got big organ
failure, the biggest.

Issue Jan.4