Will Cordeiro
Buffalo Skull
Snot-yellow & flaky as any wasp’s nest,
sockets snuffed out, brain gulch rinsed
until its hollow bone’s just brittle paper.
Sand-grains in its muzzle rattle with a thistle.
A dust-up mustered in a quashed-off sketch
the winds blast. You were the last sad prince
of a vast civilization when the sun-torched heart
-land tremored with snorting shadows & thunder
decentered across an endless pasture of tickseeds
& asters, only to be pitched athwart parched
meadows—mudholes hard winters disaffect.
A splintery quill, a relic from an age gone by.
Snot-yellow & flaky as any wasp’s nest,
sockets snuffed out, brain gulch rinsed
until its hollow bone’s just brittle paper.
Sand-grains in its muzzle rattle with a thistle.
A dust-up mustered in a quashed-off sketch
the winds blast. You were the last sad prince
of a vast civilization when the sun-torched heart
-land tremored with snorting shadows & thunder
decentered across an endless pasture of tickseeds
& asters, only to be pitched athwart parched
meadows—mudholes hard winters disaffect.
A splintery quill, a relic from an age gone by.
Glaciation
Mastodons rot below us. Neanderthals
thaw out as gases leak from permafrost
and drunken trees burble into sinkholes,
exposing bones and karst. Fabled giants
will walk again--meander in a slow burn.
Yes, lost creatures have begun to resurrect.
New ones are evolving, lumbering toward us.
The earth is murmuring. Maybe I’m the missing
link. Listen. A thin ice bursts. They’re coming.
Their far-off footsteps are my own heartbeat.
Mastodons rot below us. Neanderthals
thaw out as gases leak from permafrost
and drunken trees burble into sinkholes,
exposing bones and karst. Fabled giants
will walk again--meander in a slow burn.
Yes, lost creatures have begun to resurrect.
New ones are evolving, lumbering toward us.
The earth is murmuring. Maybe I’m the missing
link. Listen. A thin ice bursts. They’re coming.
Their far-off footsteps are my own heartbeat.
--
Will Cordeiro has work published in AGNI, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, The Threepenny Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street and is co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology, forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and teaches at Northern Arizona University.
Will Cordeiro has work published in AGNI, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, The Threepenny Review, THRUSH, and elsewhere. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street and is co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology, forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and teaches at Northern Arizona University.