Contributors / December 2016 (Issue 34)


Through The Wood & Hell To Her

by Colin Cheney

Through the wood & hell to her,

we pass the deer archaeopteryx-twisted

prairie & fuel in their blood
their sad caravansary

rotting, books of prudish nudes
at the edge of the national forest.

Interment, not internment,
someone corrects someone’s grief.

In the bushmeat diner,
rub the butterfly wing above her eye.

Listen into the empty
skull, say things it never remembered.

Something wants out—savagery, dream.

What raw sentimentality,
evolution. A sort of crush film,

like a friendship: moths & mule deer,
saplings. Gather the dead wild like old tools.

Flower needle staghorn star?

I guess I am my own answer to that


/// Original ///
 
 Colin Cheney is the author of Here Be Monsters (Georgia University Press, 2010), a National Poetry Series selection. His work has appeared in publications such as AGNI, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry. He has received a Pushcart Prize and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship. He is an editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, and the creator and co-host of the podcast Poet in Bangkok. Visit his website for more information. 
 
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