skin & earth

skeletons of growing things from last year, some sort of aster. river valley, april 8th/08

new moss under the snow, river valley, april 8th/08.

i have a lot of poems living in the form of poem-cocoon-fragments right now. my thesis is a little bit draining right now & prevents other things from getting written all at once... but i made another vesnianka; this is probably my favourite sort of ukrainian folk song = sympathetic magic for growing things! (of course, formatwise, this is not really a vesnianka, there's no refrain or anything, but it was spontaneous, & in the spirit of things, growing things should not be constrained by a framework. so, yes.)

skin & earth

i wish
my skin gave birth
like the earth’s,

to tulips unfurling
from bulbs, curled
like fetal sparrows

ready to push their
reddish beaks hungrily
through the ridges

of my collarbones,
soft freckled soil
of my chest.

april grit
under my fingernails
sprouts cedary mosses,

a bliss of juniper berries
like crow’s eyes,
birthmarks on my cheeks.

i wish
spring let me wake
with pasqueflowers

pushing purple bells
up through the soft
pulp of my heart.

* * *

last april's vesnianka-bits