losing our grip on purpose

By Kelli Lage

Thorn throated widow led me
to a riverside graveyard.
Cemented her curse in my mouth,
screeched for my eyes’ dirt.

Drowned from pulse and spirit.
Engulfed in a decayed crick’s basement.
Under stroke, under sore, under sermon.

Pregnant with the flood,
creating tokophobic women.

Houses crack bones
and I crack waters.
Howls are alive in waves.

Stalking lacerated tree trunks and dead stones.
Sifting through lost and found caskets
ransacking for another to haunt rills.

Kelli Lage is an assistant poetry editor Bracken Magazine and Best of the Net and Pushcart nominated poet. She is the author of Early Cuts, I’m Glad We Did This, and Harvest is a Chapel. Lage’s work has appeared in Stanchion Zine, Maudlin House, The Lumiere Review, Welter Journal, and elsewhere.