By Madeline Vardell

Rooted at                her center life

unmoves                            but all

around                      swirling me

shrapnel        , branches. Where

ends                 my dermacasing

I cannot be         sure and begin

her thrush           wind-pelts.

Her thrush: related to throstle and a small, medium-sized songbird.

An infection of the mouth and throat. Yeastlike. A fungus that causes patches-whitish of the throat. An agitation meaning yeastlike, is a state of turbulence. Inside the mouth turbulence is creative productivity. Men in whitecoats write candidiasis on petridishes in sharpie. An agitation and production, an infection of the female genitals. The vagina and the frog of a horse’s hoof have accumulated a foul dark-smelling perfume.

Saliva-string diagonals        across

my face-concern.                And  it

should make us            crotch-itch

when my position        veers to the

left of her eye.             I am caught

up in moments        funneling into

the temporal.

A sharpie marks the oblong dishes rattling along the counter. To die in a state of turbulence, dive down the throat: a whitish infection in-snatches.


Madeline Vardell is an MFA candidate at New Mexico State University and the winner of the 2013 Kay Murphy Prize in Poetry, selected by Lara Glenum. Her poems have recently appeared in Bayou Magazine, Rhino, [PANK], and Whiskey Island. She lives in Mesilla, New Mexico.

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