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).