|
|
One PoemAlexis OrgeraTHE ORIGINS OF YOUR NAME ARE FIXED IN SPACE Your jackrabbits are right with the world, but only half so. Your hills are full of big cats. Pooled seeds germinate here from the heat of wildfire. Imagine that, a seed who only wants to live if danger licks her spine. Doesn't matter what they call your chaparral—fynbos, matoral, mallee—or along what country's cliffs you reside in your long-baked dish of skin: cool ocean currents are your breath, mild winters your bedside. You are a rarity, a Mediteranea, three percent of earth's area. Survival is a fist down a mountain-lion's throat. Luck, as far as I can see, draws lines in the summer dust. On this side, my jugular. On the other, an erasure in the space where I once was, where you are continuous. This is the exact spot in which scientists find vacancy, a hawk too rare for form. You are drought, deciduous shrub-land. Your name could mean two legs or a bevy of wings. Alexis OrgeraAlexis Orgera lives in southern California where she slings books, only occasionally in the literal sense, and teaches high school creative writing. Her poems have recently been/will soon be in Folio; Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, and Light Industrial Safety; Green Mountains Review; Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts; Luna; and storySouth. In Posse: Potentially, might be . . .
Return |
