The sands stretch forever on this side of the world,
walking the staghorn paths of the dunes
and pulling my body up the rope staked in my hand. I hurled
this body over curves of ground, under curves of moon.
The tracks ahead of me narrow
the wide way; they stagger and swagger; they stilt
and I can see bones crack and multiply, tilt
at the waist and expand. Then marrow
flows like water, teeth tip like an arrow,
A load shot at the sun. Not-feet now-claws grip silt.
Anything built once can be rebuilt.
All my legs stretch forever into the sea
my mammal veins feel a tidepool, a fever
The dry glacier creeping behind me, hungry
but as slow as a cat in a mirror.
Amelia Gorman lives in Eureka where she spends her free time exploring forests and fostering dogs. Her fiction appears in Nightscript 6 and Cellar Door. Read her poetry in Penumbric and Vastarien. Her chapbook, the Elgin-winning Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota, is available from Interstellar Flight Press.
Banner image courtesy Amelia Gorman.
