Erin Malone
Erin Malone is the author of Site of Disappearance, finalist for the National Poetry Series, and Hover, as well as a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make. The recipient of grants from Washington’s Artist Trust, 4Culture, and the Colorado Council of the Arts, she’s taught writing at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and at the University of Washington Rome Center in Italy. She served as Editor of Poetry Northwest from 2016-2020 and now works as a bookseller on Bainbridge Island.
2024 Jack Straw Alumni Poetry Series:
“Out of the exquisitely-crafted poems in Site of Disappearance, Erin Malone has created both a page-turning mystery and a masterful investigation of memory, where symbol and metaphor merge with facts. The poems bend and stretch time and borrow breath and silence from white space. . . . This is a haunting, irresistible, utterly beautiful book.”
–Kathleen Flenniken
Investigation
Something moved in the grass—wind-roused
feathers—and with them fur
for a doll,
a dried-out cape. The soft pelt
I shouldn’t touch, my hand reaching to pet it
unbidden
unbidden:
The boy’s clothes folded neatly
next to him
in the snow (red vest)
in the grove
of wild plums