What Our Bodies Could Do

James Brunton

When I was a girl,girl meant nothingto me for a while,and later, a mysteryinside and apart from me,dark hair & hazel eyes talkingto me, turning meinto a blushing                              boy,                                                               with a shirt on, standing                                                               in the creek bed watching                                                               a shirtless boy                                                               launch his sundrenched body                                                               from the wide sycamore branch,                                                               brave as I could never be, that boy                                                               with a girlish name and skin                                                               I wanted to touch, proving                                                               what our bodies could do.    

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Color headshot of James Brunton
James Brunton is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Opera on TV (The Operating System, 2019) as well as a chapbook (co-authored with Russell Evatt), The Future Is a Faint Song (Dream Horse Press, 2014). His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, and other journals. Born and raised in Shawnee, Ohio, James now lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he teaches film studies and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

 

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Prairie Schooner

Volume 99, Number 3 (Fall 2025)

Lincoln, Nebraska

University of Nebraska

Editor-in-Chief
Timothy Schaffert

Managing Editor;
Jessica Poli

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Prairie Schooner, an international literary magazine, publishes poetry, short fiction, and essays from around the world. In recent years, the quarterly has included authors from six of the seven continents (with subscribers in just as many). Historically, it is one of the nation’s five oldest quarterlies and will celebrate its centennial with the Spring 2027 issue. A project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department since its debut in 1927, Prairie Schooner is one of UNL’s most important cultural exports and research legacies. Not only has it published some of modern literature’s most notable writers, but it has also provided opportunities for generations of students to gain first-hand editorial experience.

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