ISSUE: Summer 2017
moves away from a volcano at up to 450 mph with temperatures over 1,830 degrees Fahrenheit.
When my body blew open
the shadow-glass cloud
galloped through me, glittered
my blood to boil. Pain stretched
through its own opening,
wheezing but alive, slick
with my insides: a newborn foal
I nursed on my own milk
and licked dry after rain
fed parts of me I could survive
without—a finger, a tooth,
the end of my tongue—
but still it tried to climb back
inside, reverse as a breath,
a scream, and still every cell
in me was a cupful
of poison dividing itself
until at its cry my skin
parted for the animal,
and, exhausted, I let it come
home. A heart can beat
outside a body. So can a wound.
Nights, it climbs out of me
to run with its kin,
trailing my blood across fields,
which yields bruises
of larkspur cows eat and die
and though I hide from it
I’m relieved when it returns to sleep
in me, when I wake to feel it
breathing through my lungs
like a dark pool in a cave
that ripples without wind.
