"Flowerhead" by Dimithry Victor
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To Be In a Body I can walk for hours in wildflower fields, and meet no one, The same way I walked this house’s halls The same way I followed a boy’s spirit him to be real: If I could study how a child looks after Looking through him is looking under my tongue. Its hum. this baby had hers. I housed two hearts What separated us was In my dreams, I waded —I couldn’t slide into the trunk’s rings: I was biting the tree’s base. I was a hound. Anything that could turn wild. Your fences. Walk toward evening. If I could hold a lion’s head. Make way for song. Stay so short a time. This voice This voice, so short a song, a lion’s jaw, a heart white hard hills |
up my spine’s white hard hills, and meet no one. before a baby moved in my gut. in this dark house, wanting his topography to see he leaves his body. itself. His name a stone In the mornings, I had my body-- Believe it, for a time, that wanted different lives. my skin and bone webs. through water: what’s on the other side? —I couldn’t fold into the tree’s leaves. I was a horse. A hare. Anything wild. Someone said, hang a birdhouse. My hands on my own throat. If I could place its teeth on my throat. outside. Because we are together could be any of us. We are together. a time. Any of us could be loud in a bone web, in this dark house. |
Nicole Rollender is editor of Stitches. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, Radar Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, West Branch and others. Her first full-length poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications. She is the author of the chapbooks Absence of Stars (dancing girl press & studio), Arrangement of Desire (Pudding House Publications), and Bone of My Bone, a winner in Blood Pudding Press’s 2015 Chapbook Contest, forthcoming this year. She’s the recipient of poetry prizes from CALYX Journal, Ruminate Magazine and Princemere Journal. Find her online at nicolerollender.com.
Dimithry Victor is a 15-year-old artist. He has many aspirations and goals, but he most wishes to change the world through art and encourage people to think. Recently his work has focused on religion, everyday life, cartoons, and motivational topics.
