We Killed the Lark

Your body is a ravine hollowed
and stripped by the hot tongues
of the world and your sinister
soul has been tanned into plush
leather by poet-philosophers
and kings.

                                     The beating of your wings is a languid submission.

Beat
                                     There is a fire in your chest, we sail on your withering spine
Beat
                                                                                                              we stroke graying wings.
Beat

Your living flame has scorched
our starving hearts for centuries
and we will fall with you from the golden
sky into the ocean.

Beat
                                     We will wash up on some distant shore as dreamers

We’ll live forever
the invisible monsters that thrive on your flesh,
string together pearly
words and pull them firm against your tired throat.

Your blood is tangerine wine to us and
we make a feast of sound from your twisted
sinew. We have repurposed you for the human heart.

                                     We lay you to rest on the rib cage of the fatal world.

Beat

Gaden Weeds

Silent stalks of green
grass, spotted in golden
dandelion heads have turned their gulping
mouths to the sun.

I know to walk here is to dance with smoke
and shadow. The dead seek the edge of the forest and their shrunken
shriveled bodies taste yesterday for every
tomorrow.

Hidden in wild onion grass, I find myself
sickly, flaked
away in shades of blue
and gray
ashtray dredges.

The cries are of a dying thing
alien cruel demanding I reach out
for comfort and the trembling
darklings burn to dust.

Take me home on the wings
of all the broken things, take me home
to the circling hawks buried woodland
trails the greenhouse and the leaning tree us in blue
Crocs and flipflops eating pulpy figs with dripping
hands brick patios pressed in 1943 basketball goals
with broken nets our names carved in cement forever and
ever 2007.
you me you me you me
and you and me descend into the cloudless
cobalt sky on the backs of the wild trees.

All that is left
to see are the fields of wishing
weeds.

Liz Adair is in her final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Alabama. Her work has been published in several undergraduate journals and reviews, and she hopes to continue to pursue her love of writing in grad school. When not writing, Liz enjoys hiking through Alabama’s sublime forests, reading trashy YA novels, and caring for her beloved rescue dog, Rocky.
BACK