Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 41
Summer Solstice, 2021

Featured artwork, What Might Have Been Here Before 2, by Edward Lee

Featured Digital Poem
New Works

Elaine Neil Orr

Eve Steps Through


Listen for the acorn dropping, for your own breath, the smudging sound of your hand across this page, the pin nib on paper, your own sip of tea, the tea cup settled back in the coaster, the sound of a honking crow through glass, the beeping printer warming up. Let the refrigerator hum. Let the heat kick in in winter. Let the creek gurgle and splash, the owl whoo-hoo.

Cease all traffic, radio, television. Cease the revving motor, leaf blower, lawn mower.

Let the coffee maker hiss, the door squeak, water drip from the eave. Let the chipmunk chirp. Have you heard his steady talk? Let the wind in the trees sound like waves. Hear the silverware rattle in the sink, the peepers peep.

Hear the dog's feet hit the floor, the tin foil rattle, the wind chimes chime.

Cease the sirens, the gun shot, fire truck, chain saw, ticking clock. The church bell.

Eat the loud apple. Sit at the window. Step through it.


Elaine Neil Orr is the author of a memoir, Gods of Noonday (UVa.P 2003) and two novels, A Different Sun and Swimming Between Worlds (Berkley/Penguin/Random House 2013, 2018). Her prose and poetry appear in The Missouri Review, Blackbird, The Louisville Review and Image Journal, among other places. She is a professor of literature at N.C. State University and serves on the Brief-Residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University. She was born and grew up in Nigeria.