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"Poem" by Steele Dunn

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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?

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