Afterburn
       

Things too thin inhabit our dreams and we take on
their starving. We live until hunger

takes on such a shape that it is shoulder blades
in everything and sounds up in the trees. Then,

such ghosts. Such bones without skins doubled over.
A starless night every night and starlessness

is ashes or newsprint on the hands. Living
is barely a flock of birds the way it moves

like falling; it must be the cure for something,
the last lit house on a dead end street

or a hunger with two minds, drawing children
to the damp sheds at the far fence of their yards.

There is an entire August storm in everything said,
and to open the violent hives of remembering,

we imagine marigolds, birds drowned in the creek,
the lights left on in a room left behind.

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Copyright © 2013 Jennifer Militello All rights reserved
from Body Thesaurus
Tupelo Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission