"Poem" by Steele Dunn
don’t you clap to shatter the sertraline fog?
don’t your bones break brittle in the dark sun’s heat?
don’t you move
up the mountain
like water
singing slower than the birds
to draw them in
and don’t they come?
don’t the moths
steal the honey
from under your tongue?
aren’t you shaking?
aren’t you black eyed elemental
chanting names like incantations
under old growth forest pines
until their trunks all stretch and hum
until the beasts all swell and blur
and birth a figure of yourself
hands wet with sap
and open?
aren’t you lying looking upward
at the everburning bear?
and don’t you reach
into her teeth
to be lifted out
and taken up
and left in peace?