3/1/2019 Poetry by Kate ShannonGalápagos these days, i am re-learning what mourning looks like with unsteady hands, shaking like unsettled bones; i am equally unsettled in the rattling wind, with a graveyard mouth that is stumbling in the dearth where i am pinned to the roots of this gnarled tree and the boughs are shuddering under their own weight. i am unsettled in the shape mourning takes beneath my palms: the ridge of a kissed brow; the nooks of cinnamon-sugar toast and the crannies of late spring; the breeze of hammock touches; a well-traveled trail, distant now, fades beneath my fingertips. i am wilting in the upbeat, with a throat ripe with bruised fruit, i am abundance that never makes the shelves, the farmer went home, the fruit rotted. bees swarmed. splintered arms dangle over my head in lost words, i think about you: June lips, curled under the cinnamon sun, the rest turns to dust. the anatomy of a woman is dendrochronology the root of the root, as it were, is the tugging tendril that creeps between the clay pot of my lungs to bury my bones into the dirt, where i have learned to sprout and stoop towards the sun in despite: despite my skin, all that damp peat i have drowned under, or my nose bit black in the early frost; i have lived here, watching the decomposition of myself who once but also never was; if i could, i would speak to her from beneath the earth but i am still learning how to describe the scent of living soil. i am still borrowing this creaking world and she has all of her lives planned. should i return, i am just elongated limbs, labyrinthine fingers coaxing around a heart that lifts itself to the full sky. my corpse is no subtle creature, a sapling, still; i count the soft rings of her; i watch her love the huddled things, the slow rise of their chests; the curl of their molten fists; i watch her melt into the earth and rise into a cloud of smoke; watch her roll off distant mountaintops. ![]() Nestled in the mountains of Upstate New York, Kate Shannon is a farmhand and environmentalist who spends her free days backpacking and writing. She mostly uses natural and environmental themes in her work, as nature has always had a place in her heart, even in the darkest of times.
Juliette
3/2/2019 10:28:49 am
Wow, amazing imagery. These are beautiful works. Comments are closed.
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