drought anatomy #4

dried out creek bed
dry stacked stone
the limbs of a woodstove, relatively ancient
scattered leaves dropped off their rusty hinges
the vestigial chaos of the penultimate backup at the crematorium
sun-white shade of last year’s turtle shell
matching the bone of the underside of the oak pamphlets
littering last centuries’ street
fallen early this year
navigating the skeletons of june
wineberry canes, sparse
a testament to the desperation of the deer;
chewing thorns in the drought
the way the powdered bloom dusting the canes
catches the glow in the low winter light
i wish my bones would glow like that
i think my bones are starting to glow like that

refolded envelope #2

the purple-stem cliffbrake lashes
framing the smoky eyed boulder lichen
beat on the limestone below
waiting for that shale sky
to remind them of that night
back in the devonian
when their mud was the same mud
folded over itself
feet between thighs

Emma Loomis-Amrhein is a trans writer and naturalist who is particularly enamored of birds and moths. Her work tends towards poetry but occasionally appears in essay. She primarily writes about the margins and marginalia. Her debut collection of poetry, evening primroses, (April 2021) is available from Recenter Press. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and resides in over a dozen publications. She lives in rural, southern Ohio.

Image: An Errant Knight, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons