Poems

Evidence of Absence

Time slides sideways. 

I collect remnants of
what never was,
what might have been,
knowing neither exists. 

Every morning,
I sweep more of it
into neat piles by the door. 

Funny how you can drown
in what never happened.

The Coup
(2025, 1st Place in Literature)

Time’s Accordion

I am the girl
who counted Mississippis between lightning,
and the woman tracking time by pill bottles. 
I am scraped knees on hot concrete,
and the ache of joints mapping every fall. 

Time folds inward,
pleating moments together,
each ripple carrying
the first step, the fade of stars. 

Years coil in my DNA,
spiraling through generations,
threading the needle
between memory and dream. 

My child self plays hopscotch
through tomorrow’s uneven ground,
while life carves canyons
between my smile lines. 

I am all my ages at once:
like rays through prisms,
past and future bending
into pure light.

The Coup
(2025)

About

Elana Churchill is an emerging Black woman poet who writes about transformation, identity, and the quiet revolutions of healing. Her work has appeared in The Coup (Minot State University) and was honored with a 2025 Yeats Poetry Prize Honorable Mention, judged by January Gill O’Neil.

She is working on her first chapbook and writes from Tennessee.