Tributaries
by Aspen Everett
Middle Creek Publishing, 50pp., $18.00
Toni Morrison once wrote, “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it once was.” Poet Aspen Everett takes this message to heart in his chapbook Tributaries. He dedicates the chapbook to seeking (re)connection, with words that flow like water to mimic life’s journey and offer erasure, detoxification, and a cleansing.
Originally from Kansas, Everett now resides in Boulder, Colorado. Still, his poetry features shared history and memories that Midwesterners prefer to discard, as in the poem, “Passing through Kansas.” Here the speaker remarks on their past, and opines, “Old men hold to what they own, / conservative as cotton.” The speaker evokes a bygone Dust Bowl where folks boarded up storefronts, left home, and stranded their goodbye ghosts “by the side of the road.”
A thread of adulation for matriarchal spirituality and the lifegiving value of water runs through the collection. Its first poem pays homage to Morrison, quoting her 1986 essay, “The Site of Memory” in the title, “All Water Has Perfect Memory.” Everett uses repetition here like a mantra,
rise
the rivers rising
take me
take me
rushing waters
The meditation flows in a gentle rhyme in lines that embody this cleanse like “feed the sea, / the heart of me / remembering.” The narrator is ready for a rebirth, like a river held behind a dam ready to burst, as conveyed in lines from “The Sediment of New Beginnings”:
We exist as one.
You bleed the Mother’s milk
that I have wept for you.
I knew you within the womb
Not all is new life and hope, though. The speaker of “Harvest Season” remarks upon family farms gone to seed. They seem to mourn a livelihood now gone, but one which they did not embrace for themselves. When Agrobusiness takes over where small subsistent level farms once stood, anything in the way of their destruction succumbs to its will. The speaker evokes Agrobusiness mechanisms that do not and can not stop in lines like:
the Combines are coming
to raze the field
discarded, half selves
dry barren earth
Everett acknowledges where he is from and where he is now in the ode “Coyote Taught Me Poetry.” The speaker describes the windblown plains topography, the wildlife, and homosocial relationships, remembering when, “We drove in circles, guzzling gasoline/ethanol, / PBR, packs n’ packs of Marlboro.” In his youth, he tried fitting in, but “[l]ike Coyote, / I was always hungry” for something else.
Hunger leads to the speaker’s chosen wilderness in the poem “Wild Sunflowers on a Dirt Road,” where they grapple with the idea of home as roots and the road a journey leading to forgiveness for themselves and others. Everett writes,
Wilderness was neither destination nor sycamore.
Wilderness was walking away from time & obligation,
to sit with the eternity of flowers & rivers
The speaker seems to find the peace he needs in the West, in the mountains of Colorado. In “Pine Trees Covered in Snow,” they write that “pine boughs bend easily / beneath the weight of water / towards release” and let “a little light in / only when it is time.” The poem suggests that time provides openings to enlightenment through purposeful detachment, ending with the line “in falling, an opening.”
The chapbook’s final poem, “Confluence,” incorporates the traditional American folk-hymn “Down in the River to Pray.” A bracketed line encourages readers to sing along, as if the reader, like Everett’s speaker, will encounter their own baptismal washing in these tributaries that form inside us running sweet, free, and slow.
Tributaries won the 2025 Fledge Poetry Award and publication by Middle Creek Press because its poetics connect readers with the world they inhabit. The poems encourage us to care for the places in which we live, the people we encounter, and most importantly, for ourselves. The chapbook will be released on June 1 2025, but is now available for preorder.
About the Author
Aspen Everett is a poet and creative from the wind-tossed flatlands of Southeast Kansas. Writing what they call Heathen Mythology, Aspen aims to rewrite the cultural myths of dominion and return readers to reverence for the More-than-Human. Following fetid rivers upstream until the waters ran clean, they find themselves in Boulder Colorado, beneath the shadow of Mt. Arapaho.
Tributaries is their first book.
Contributor Bio
Poet, Educator, and Advocate Shelli Rottschafer (she/her/ella) completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico in 2005 in Latin American Contemporary Literature. From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught Spanish at a small liberal arts college in Michigan. Summer 2023 she began her low-residency MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry at Western Colorado University, Gunnison. She resides in Louisville, Colorado & El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner and rescue pup.
Contents
Book Excerpt: Further Thought by Rae Armantrout
Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for January 2025, “Further Thought” from Go Figure by Rae Armantrout, along with a few words from the poet.
Read five poems by poet A.L. Nielsen, our first biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “When We Walked”.
Chapbook Poem: The Poem as an Act of Betrayal by Benjamin S. Grossberg
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for January 2025, “The Poem as an Act of Betrayal” from As Are Right Fit by Benjamin S. Grossberg, along with a few words from the poet.
Jan. ‘25: Year One: What worked, what didn’t, and what to expect
Editor Aiden Hunt looks back at our first year and discusses changes to Philly Poetry Chapbook Review in 2025.
Three Poems by Shelli Rottschafer
Read three poems by poet Shelli Rottschafer, our second biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “Because We Remember.”
Dancing With the Dead: On Ragnarök at the Father-Daughter Dance by Todd Dillard
“Todd Dillard successfully transgresses the unspoken cultural embargo on work that grapples with life during the COVID-19 pandemic in his new chapbook, Ragnarök at the Father-Daughter Dance.”
Read three poems by poet Wendell Hawken, our third biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “First Hurt”.
Book Excerpt: Slow Chalk by Elaine Equi
Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for February 2025, “Slow Chalk” from Out of the Blank by Elaine Equi, along with a few words from the poet.
Chapbook Poem: Caro M. by Angela Siew
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for February 2025, “Caro M.” from Coming Home by Angela Siew, along with a few words from the poet.
Read four poems by poet Natalie Marino, our fourth biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue.
A Conversation with Kate Colby
Poet Kate Colby discusses her latest chapbook, ThingKing, her creative writing practices, and her penchant for poetry chapbooks with PCR Editor Aiden Hunt in this interview piece.
Read three poems by poet Adele Ross, our fifth biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “Heavy Water”.
Book Excerpt: The Self-Combed Woman by Laynie Browne
Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for March 2025, “The Self-Combed Woman” from Apprentice to a Breathing Hand by Laynie Browne, along with a few words from the poet.
Chapbook Poem: To Let Go by Deirdre Garr Johns
Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for March 2025, “To Let Go” from Fallen Love by Deirdre Garr Johns, along with a few words from the poet.
Read four poems by poet Sarena Tien, our sixth biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “Mother Tongue”.
Life’s Lazy River Journey: On Tributaries by Aspen Everett
“A thread of adulation for matriarchal spirituality and the lifegiving value of water runs through the collection. Its first poem pays homage to [Toni] Morrison.” Read the full chapbook review by Shelli Rottschafer.
Three Poems by Jeanne Bamforth
Read three poems by poet Jeanne Bamforth, our seventh and final biweekly poet of the Winter 2025 issue, along with a few words about the poem “New Course”.