By Michelle Lewis
Now trees have shaken in the wind where there is
no wind and you must clutch yourself.
You must toggle on your heelbone and become it.
This is how they plot the living: to rove and arc us,
take away our bough, our eros, whatever shell we breasted. To rise
the bottom up and drop it out of me.
Heart merely ash, and the Flame I’m mother to–
it clings, it takes my knees down. I cannot put more blood to it.
You can find some of Michelle’s most recent poetry in Spoon River Poetry Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Feminist Wire, Requited (March 2016), The Indiana Review (Summer 2016) and The Bennington Review (Fall/Winter 2016). She is also the author of a forthcoming chapbook, Who Will Be Frenchy? (dancing girl press, Fall 2016). She lives in Maine.
