Emily Ellison

and if to disappear is to appear

as breath is a cycle of light
permeable and thus permeated
filled and bespeckled, the splendor of dust is

all that has entered and left
the newborn
still, and so is

the cicada in or outside of herself?

the insect is and was and so is
                                       and so is you
                                       and you

pulling the body loose from its powder
the wings of flight
cocoon
time as time unfleshes.

dismembered mother
when did you last
grind your fingers into grit
into the soil of your maiden land
and taste of fossils, and of fathers--
the first which is not first but at least.
when did you last swallow yourself
                                                  as dirt?
have you held it in your rib like a snake?

all the small plants reaching reach
the limit of their extension
until the sun sets them down and long
as rows of ants
and vines
and water which wants to be the baby’s cheek--

the hand I return to,
the howl of the willow
tree lingering​ on the moth’s
eruption.
​

---

blush of mountain laurel

I never intended to love you
          shortly,
to be blown by a breeze
of someone else’s
mouth,
          to taste honeycomb
as it dripped.

                    but the body
in oblong bloom

          will not permit
my heart’s murmur
          a longevity, to hum

like the bee
entering.

     reaching
     every tongue up,
     you taste
          the sky
divorced of skin,

          for I cannot hold
          myself
against
your peony of chest,

though
          ​my vase
                    wanted
to cradle
          and sip
your twilight
                    lake.

like the blush
of mountain
laurel,
          my love is just
a jagged
          ​arrangement
of petalled hands.

I cannot hold
the sun.

--
Emily Ellison is a second year MFA poet at Texas State University, where she also works as a Teaching Assistant for their English faculty. Her work has appeared in Southword, After the Pause, and Haiku Journal, and is upcoming in several places. Emily lives in San Marcos, Texas with two cats and an abundance of plants (withering at the moment).