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River Cache
By Amber Hickey
A child leaves toe-shaped markings on the shore
Too-hot sun against their skin
Skirting small shards of glass peering up from the muddy path
They look down at the silty river, still flowing despite
Rusty bike chain
glinting dully through the water
from the soft riverbed
Sticky clear plastic uneasily swaying
the eager mouths of fish agape
Their sage songs muffled
Wet layered soils
flickering memories
decaying vessels
sheltered by deep green subterranean life
Pollen swirls, shifting shape
hovering atop the slow, sludgy current
A tidal surge,
long-buried waterway
damned, damned
Sacred data, loosely held
Radionuclides; chicken carcasses;
coal runoff; urine;
salt
The complicated smell of home
You’ve held your breath long enough
Exhume your inhalation
Meet the Poet – Amber Hickey
Amber Hickey (they/them) is a writer, professor, doula, and parent of two small children, originally from Oceanside, California. Their work often engages with the intersections between art, activism, and the environment. New to creative writing, their scholarly work has appeared in the Journal of Transnational American Studies Special Issue on Molecular Intimacies of Empire (2022), the Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change (2021), Power Shift: 101 Words for a New Politics of Energy (West Virginia University Press, 2025), and is forthcoming in a special issue of TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies on “Queer Nightlife.”
Hickey also contributed to the recent edited volume Seahorses: Trans and Nonbinary Pregnancy (PM Press, 2025) and their first piece of creative non-fiction, “Waves will always be louder than bombs,” was published in early 2024 as part of Ocean Space’s “Journeys” series.
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