Casey Knott
​

Do Not

​Your mother phones to tell you
that someone you don’t even know has
up and died--
38 and with a blood clot to the lung. Used to be
she warned you about reading in the dark
and parking lots--
the men waiting under your car
with lust and razor blades.
Keep your keys in your hand.
Never park by a van.
Never walk by yourself and if you must,
a can of pepper spray at arms-length in your bag.
Don’t make eye contact,
don’t give an inch,
​
so many don’ts it’s no wonder
language itself was born of fear--
the root of words first uttered to warn
of danger, not unlike the instinctual tizzy
my chickens make when a hawk wings
the sky over their coop. Even
trees release chemicals when distressed--
an infestation present, a giraffe
hell-bent on its’ dinner of leaves,
and that flock of birds perched--
you won’t find them
remarking from their piped beaks
the precious slant of light settling
in their boughs like prayer, but a song
instead for loneliness, an alarm
for the dog that won’t let up
the bark it wears.

And even the pretty ones—words for
love or bloom, mother
and moon—a kind of balm to sugar
the worry of absence.
We are irrevocably propelled
to be in our living plagued with fear
for all we stand to lose—and still,
we’d rather the trouble of remaining
our bodies--
oh Earth,
how you must dazzle us.

---

--
Casey Knott is the author of "Ground Work" (Main Street Rag, 2018) and the hybrid memoir "This Season, The Next" (forthcoming, Cornerstone Press). Her work has appeared most recently in Prism Review, Gulf Stream, Storm Cellar, december, Contemporary Verse 2, The New Territory, The Westchester Review, Cimarron Review, Salamander, Sugar House Review, and Thin Air Magazine.
​
​​