POETRY BY ROSEANNA ALICE BOSWELL

I Become Obsessed with Surviving a Bear Attack

I have never seen a bear

in the wild. I imagine bear

scenarios: I am walking through 

a forest with my lover, naked.

There are bears everywhere.

It is a bear orgy. A bear festival.

My lover is immediately eaten

by a bear. I am frozen. I try to

remember the difference

between a bluffing bear & sincere

aggression. O no––I’ve died again.

Reset scenario. Try another path.

What is it about the word

mauled. I watch another TikTok

about bear behavior: ears back

mean death. Red claws mean

death. Baby bears mean death.

Ears forward & they may only

stalk you back home. Bear

reconnaissance. Bear home

invasion. Once my mother

saw a bear, she thinks. Mistook

it for a too-large dog. It was only

a small bear. Still can’t be

too careful. I read another story

about bears: Goldilocks leaving

a tent unzipped. That’s not fair,

I know. Bears just need to get by

like anybody else. Bad bear

press is bad camper behavior. 

Bears can run 35 miles per hour.

My car can’t even make that up hill, 

probably can’t outflank a furred 

shadow coming up the rearview.

Roseanna Alice Boswell is the author of Hiding in a Thimble (Haverthorn Press, 2021) and Imitating Light (Iron Horse Literary Review, 2021). A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Roseanna holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University and is a Ph.D. student in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. Her work has appeared in: RHINO, Whiskey Island, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Originally from upstate New York, Roseanna currently haunts Oklahoma with her husband and their cats, Bean and Blossom.