the blueshift journal

back to issue

next: malone, florida

I.

In the night—

the leaves felt like animal skins.

​

We poached nameless fruit—

from the soft

​

of our ears. Our hound

already knew the way—

​

divined, what we couldn’t see.

As if we could slip

​

though the fog— both savage

and protected by our elements.

​

II.

I hid in my grandmother’s bed—

to feel pregnant

​

and swollensad. Yearning then—

was for ultraviolet

​

and the things I couldn’t name.

I was Artemis— all crescent,

​

blue give. I dreamt of my grandmother’s

lost child

​

and the stitch— pulling skins like a magnet.

​

III.

I spit on the starling’s marl,

ravaged your blackberry wing—

​

token and shorn.

We tried some elixirs— a zygote,

​

pearl / root / nebula.

Nothing could revive or affix— the birdhound.

​

Or what we had lost,

another orifice.