Allie Wisniewski is a poet, photographer, naturalist, and dancer, currently residing in Salt Lake City, Utah. She spent most of her life in North Florida and is greatly influenced by the culture and ecology of the southeast. Her work explores our complicated relationship with nature, as well as memory, mundanity, and sense of place.
Allie graduated with honors from Florida State University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts, double majoring in English and Studio Art. Her writing has been published both digitally and in print by Poetry Super Highway, American Forests Magazine, Colorado Life Magazine, Utah Life Magazine, and Food Network, with forthcoming work in Cardinal Sins Journal.
In her free time, you can find her reading magical realism novels, conversing with native plants, or thrifting for vintage treasures. She also loves foraging, complaining about capitalism, mixing house music, and pretending to be productive at the coffee shop. She’s a beginner gardener, and she’s still not over that first tomato.
Were You Awake Beyond this giant window I can tell it is snowing in the mountains and somewhere between them and me you are taking a nap. On the way to the airport I couldn’t think of anything to say, for other reasons but mostly because lightless morning feels too sacred to speak over. I love the vacant hum of pre-dawn drive-thrus and the way you handed me my sandwich with such care, always knowing the preciousness of everything. On the highway I was very aware of my chewing and yours and I ate slowly because I thought maybe I could stall my leaving at the terminal, which didn’t work because an orange vest came charging towards us and everyone was frantic at best, moving through and over and around each other like insects smelling sugar. For a moment I felt frantic, too, flashers flashing, then you kissed me with your delicious hash brown mouth and I got out of the car and said good morning to some person just to think about something else. Sitting at the gate with the most violent ray of sunshine on my face what I want to ask you is were you awake when you kissed my back which was to you in the middle of the night, your lips precise in the dark like a dart finding center, piercing my fragile shell of sleep. Look how home evades me all these miles above your heaving chest, how this notion of stasis is never present tense. Drifting off in the window seat I think of snow in the mountains still piling up silently, our stories adrift in midair like space junk too big and too heavy to pluck from orbit. http://anicowis.com alliewisnieski3@gmail.com
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