Debbie Yee
Issue 12 • March 2014
Arranged beasts, unlike a field guide
to desert flowers, bestow order on stories
told from our rooftop planetarium. Borrowed
cyclops scopes that aid a handful of winks
shrug wide an atmosphere of unlit bodies,
capture in their sights an earth of children
riding home in unmarked cars, they crossing
hand over hand in daisy promises,
they the bright wrappers of flavored stars.
I long for a deep new cradling, lessons taught
by twig and hair nests of tenacious red-tailed hawks.
Indelible tattoos from birthed surgeries
people empty houses these days.
We, not unicorn myths, table the contents
in a compendium of wise living and other lore,
we the regretful, little sage bites,
we the warm, loose taste of egg soup.
The welt of scar tissue bodying me
was merciful, imbued our land in a sea foam
filling beached obsolescence around tidal
sponges. Let me nourish in briny ore
the one smooth, whole sand dollar
that has ever found you, you the rigid
spine of a wool-shorn mammoth,
you the lush tail of the cleverest fox.