Daniel Casey

The Smallest Divisions

There are, of course, degrees.
A cup of water is a displacement,
anything sluiced from the blue, a longing.
Similarly, when fire collects itself,
it is called a forest. Out west, it is dawn.
I’m not quite sure of the southern
term for it, but I think it’s a withering.
When the air’s thick, dandered hands press
over your nose and mouth smothering you,
loving you so much even though you push it to do
these terrible things. It presses you into
sunken earth where the feast of needles
begins, myriad mandibles dragging from you
all you’re worth to further green the world.

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Daniel Casey has a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. His poems and reviews have appeared in The Rise Up Review, Tuck Magazine, Waxing & Waning, North of Oxford, Heavy Feather Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and JMWW Journal. He lives in Murray, Kentucky.