Holly Mitchell

Falling out of the tether


I slurred briars;
 
I called out: bone king,
antler king,
 
& I could barely
feel my hands,
 
my limbs, that branch,
a slender echo
 
of not only but also
the purr of water.
​
​

Sources:“Walking El Pulguero” by Eisder Mosquera. “Poems from Blue Tarp” by John Duvernoy. “Battery Pie” by Kateri Menominee. “The Wild Divine” by Ada Limón. “Erotic Vagrancy, Anyone?” by Maureen Dowd. “Song” by William Fargason.

He handled antlers,


their velvet masonry,
 
& fat to ragged
deer legs’
 
ending strings.
Taking pulls off
 
a brown bottle,
he released
 
the shutter &
breathed deeply
 
at last, his wedding
band scarred, his
 
eyes no longer two
bruised surfaces.
​


Sources: “Battery Pie” by Kateri Menominee. “Like trains of cars on tracks of plush (#66)” by Emily Dickinson. “A Melody Hunting” by Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp. “Service” by Ada Limón. “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941” by Alan Cheuse. “Opticks” by Eleanor Chai. “Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh” by Thomas James.

Summer-sore horses


find the energy lines under
weight shifters, some tick / tick
of brightly colored insects,
the ticking we are each built with.
 
You were the reigns of the house.
I do not funeral. You are the reigns
made of homogenous darkness.
The neighbors do you in their talk,
the song, take everything in.
​


Sources: “took so much” by John Liles. “Poetry & Ritual” by CAConrad. “Ars Poetica” by Norman Dubie. “Poem in Which a Bird Does Some of the Talking” by John Yau. “luam mending clothes —umbertide” by Aracelis Girmay. “The Necklace Without Peer” by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi, translated by David Larsen. The Poetry Project’s review of The Crown Ain’t Worth Much by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. Again, “The Necklace Without Peer” by Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi, translated by David Larsen. “Funes the Memorious: by Jorge Luis Borges. “Surety” by Lizette Woodworth Reese. “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath.




--
Holly Mitchell is a poet from Kentucky who is now based in New York. A winner of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers and a Gertrude Claytor Prize from the Academy of American Poets, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College. Her Farm Centos manuscript was a finalist for the 2017 Atlas Review Chapbook Series, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Juked, and Paperbag, among other journals.