first come the worms, to make cathedral
doors of your body. then the motionless paradise of
your decomposition blooms
tiger lily, electric-blue moss, passiflora
incarnata. you know those dinosaur bones
that kid found in the dirt behind
the church? they’ve been waiting to become
your new femurs, all along. someone breaks
the binary between magic and science—
you can now swallow a periodic table
to take flight. god parts the red sea but forgets
to tell you it’s only biodegradable red glitter.
surprise, surprise! it is now time to go
down to the river and interrogate the green
troll. the green troll :: bearded & barefoot &
fuming in the slanted afternoon light. in the slanted
twilight, odonata shimmer everywhere,
expensive brooches pinned to eucalyptus leaves,
spikes of aloe, frothy pink clumps
of jupiter’s beard. odonata whir in purple
mist :: odonata dead underwater, still as sparkly
stones. remember the swarms of cicadas
last summer? how their skins made ghosts of
the trees? this year, paradise garnishes
itself with Pink Lady Apples®, ‘garnish’ from
the germanic ‘to warn.’ baby, don’t worry
so much. why not drink sun-warmed sodas, eat
overripe fruit pulled off slouching trees, spark
cigarettes to death, kiss, and kiss, until you conceive
of your body as a sanctuary? in the absence
of the sun’s glitter, all the shadows disappear.
all the whirring
starts ceasing. all the world
undresses, sloughing off light and longing
for the blue cool where this cool blue longing belongs.
Lizzy Ke Polishan is the author of A Little Book of Blooms (2020) and the Managing Editor at River & South Review. Her recent poems appear in Gulf Coast, Passages North, Epoch, and elsewhere. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband. WEB INSTA
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