Muriel Nelson
Muriel Nelson’s publications include Part Song, winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize (Bear Star Press), and Most Wanted, winner of the ByLine Chapbook Award (ByLine Press). Nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Four Way Review, Front Porch Journal, Hunger Mountain, National Poetry Review, The New Republic, Northwest Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and Superstition Review, and on Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Italian Culture published her critical essay on Eugenio Montale. She holds master's degrees from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the University of Illinois School of Music.
Showing Signs
A fir leans out over a slough, roots coming cleaner each year
while its top dies free of branches.
But it’s balanced for now like a ballerina: billowing tutu and
slender line — brilliant sky backdrop and beckoning pit —
dark self, deeper reflection —
held pose, a NO.
Held thought: Here I go.