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Variation 6: Snake by Alice B. Fogel

October 1, 2013 Contributed By: Alice B. Fogel

Have use of edges.
Alongside field—crosshatch trees

to their meadow pedestal.
Way is seam

here beneath eaves where when further
forest rises and effaces sun

camouflaging silver bleed
congeals.  Smaller than rivers

go sleek like rivers and like
rivers slip unseen

below earthly surface things—
pour with invisible volition

between storm-tamped
weeds—slip clear

through stone to lick
fresh linings of eggs.

Chromatic curvature—scale
horizon’s arc littered with all

closest slightest movements
of toad and vole—small

measures of hungry sight.
More beautiful than wind more

grounded than birds
more clever and calm

than time what more
need for body than this:

To crush sloughed leaves
with slim sounds no louder in heaven

than none—migrate
through tunnel skin meant to briefly

burrow in—emerge
clean removed and hunt whole again.

 

Return to table of contents for Issue 7 Summer 2013

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: October 1, 2013

Further Reading

An Account of Vertebrates
by Mandira Pattnaik

In the event of being just matured, we could be jellyfish — pliable, buoyant, floral.

Interview with Novelist Miriam McNamara
by Raki Kopernik

Miriam McNamara was born in Ireland, raised in the Southern United States, and now lives in the Midwest. She has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of two queer young adult historical novels. Her debut, The Unbinding of Mary Reade, was released in 2018 by Sky Pony […]

Graffiti at a Medieval Manor House Ruin in Oxfordshire
by Stephen Gibson

There were graffiti, initials, dates carved everywhere, much of it around doorjambs which had no doors; much also around window frames where the air just passed through—there was no more glass, not even shards, anywhere.   Alice S. and Robert W. visited before the Great War. They carved their initials, in 1912, with great care. […]

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