Poem: “This Astrological Weather”

By Katie Jean Shinkle

 

 

Can we remember

how it felt in the winter

of lights and hands

together in prayer

and finding our heads

intertwined, a monster

of twin, a triplet of fang

and swine, six knees

and a warning. I am living

easier and breathing

somewhat normally

and still unable to understand

how our sutures continue to gape.

Hello, I don’t know

you from anyone, could not

pick you out in a crowd

but I still feel this specific desire

this astrological weather

how a heart needs and needs

until the muscle expends itself

thoroughly, peeling

like a dogwood tree.

 

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Katie Jean Shinkle is the author of The Arson People (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2015) and Our Prayers After the Fire (Blue Square Press, 2014), as well as three chapbooks, most recently Baby-Doll Under Ice (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014). Other work can be found in or is forthcoming from The Collagist, Booth, BLOOM, Barrow Street, FLAUNT Magazine, and elsewhere.