A Sunday series from RVA Magazine featuring writers from Richmond and Virginia
Writer’s Block is RVA Magazine’s Sunday series highlighting contemporary writers working in Richmond and across the Commonwealth. Each week, we feature original poems, short stories, or essays. Just real voices writing right now.
This week, we’re featuring four poems by Brittany Butchello, a Virginia-born writer whose work moves quietly but deliberately — tracing the contours of memory, geography, and loss. Her poems feel like postcards from places both real and emotional: the brackish waters between Williamsburg and Yorktown, the quiet weight of the 804, and the parks and gardens that hold echoes of what once was.
If you’d like to be featured, send your work to hello@rvamag.com with the subject line “Writer’s Block.”
Photo by Annie Spratt
Brackish Water
— Williamsburg to Yorktown
The river feeds into the bay.
Perfectly imbalanced, salt water and fresh.
Reveling in harmony, beneath the bridge.
Its hidden undertow, releasing to solitude,
escape and tranquility.
A college to the creek, for its open views.
Neutral concrete, nearby sealed asphalt, equally weighed.
Meeting ground, the sun and the water.
One rises, as another fades
into the horizon.
804
— Richmond
Eight years to see
under the mountains of pressure, empty words.
Four years to write
between rock and sea, filled pages.
This place, where art not only matters,
it holds meaning.
When Time Passes
— One state to another
How do we recreate lost memories?
. . .
With your eyes, you share
more than words.
In your memory, I listen
for the unspoken.
Children in the Garden
— Williamsburg
We’ll meet at the beginning,
where a park lies across the train tracks––
full of beautiful rose bushes, climbing hydrangeas,
as eagles bald, wolves gray, and horses tower.
Soaring roller coasters turn, children sit
behind a polished and golden throne––
voices echo in retired misty caverns, intertwining hills,
as butterflies surface, stomachs twist, and joy fades.
Filling with sweet smoke, the emptiness calling
to twenty-one rays of light extinguished––
once I questioned its beauty, passing years,
as doors close, time disappears and children run.
Past the turnstiles, knowing in the end
we’ll find each other again.
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