Talia Reed

Just After

The days crowd together, damming up the heart.
I try to run ahead of them, to station
soldiers at every one-hundred yard;
the cloudier, the bloodier, the easier the life.

The razor wire enclosures transform
any resort town into a war compound.

The summer air ignites the brain's memories;
the solar flame that turns me around.
Each bloom was some moment before and with
the daylily it is always death. Wild.
Orange . Sudden. Thick and proven.

The dirty humidity rises
invisibly from its hot blacktop and
buzzing wire. The urgent rushing of
traffic just before and just after.

Mors Mortis

a serum maintains somatic pressure—
sprays out the smoke stacks, keeps everything

pink and carnate. let the pieces rise in
the static human. let the heart melt down,

drain out. shift and match her rigidity,
her calcifying frame, her bundled fibers,
her gently crawling blood…

footprints stitch through the snow drifts; a perfect scar.
the stars and I ache together.

Vertebra #11

Power grids of the world undid their hold,
unfurled their nation-state; blossoming
constellation reawakened. Limit hit
vertebra #11 and squarely burned every bone
bit driven into the unnerving shuffle,

ripening the casualties. Terrestrial decay.
And united nations day.