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"Flowerhead" by Dimithry Victor

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.
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