Three by
Molly Stern
neossoptile
beneath the juvenile bird’s feathers—liquefaction.
the windswept body lies parsed by surf
onrush of the ocean, a birth of movements in space
as the synapses decay, spread multiform
become as a flood of new beings, cellular clinging
salt-soaked and gulping at cold tides.
the clambering limbs are limed with it
this departure—or is it a greeting?—overwhelming
bonds snap, a gentle swaying of the carcass on the swell
the stink of its bloated godhand
the terminal fruit flowering over, into an anemious dawn.
the body is laid bare
every nerve flushed with the sinistrorse turning
of flesh to dust, dust to flesh
the raw commonality of it—
to feel the sharp pull of ether reaching down from another world
dazed by the star lights, knocked to our backs by it
defenseless against the merciless plucking of a hidden colony
the eyes cloud over—no place to alleviate it
no relief rushing down from it
only the sleep movements of planets at night.
nyctinasty
obnubilate me
in an instant, render me indistinct
cover me in a winding latebra
let me sink into obscurity, a dissipating mist
the breath is ombrogenous in an arid land
seasons of suffocation begin
the skies birth a body
the world is alive with it
muscose clouds thickly gathered
I am immobilized, crushed under cold clay
but not yet senseless to it
I watch the rise of a new body above the trees
chosen, encircled by the hand of him, the god
I am left below
the dripping of a rainswept land in my ears
eyes beclouded by night, that inblowing of darkness.
nutual, adj.: expressed merely by a gesture
having the tendency to become of rock—the sky, the water
my body, breathing
the touch of—
isolation of—
the body
rain-dampened and hot
to see the growth become a part of it
the breath a cosmic offshoot
of the body’s totality
searching for distance at a molecular level
the so-called sleep movements
only gestures
a folding of planets
bodies crowding through woods
to render obscure
sunlight
refracted in a nutual greeting.
Molly Stern lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her poetry has appeared in E·ratio, Witness Magazine, So to Speak and The Mays Anthology.