BHS Inkwell 2017-2018

By Ulysses Forte The Den

It’s warmer here; Heat flows from a golden muzzle that has yet to murder, Immobile in embrace locked with maternal claws. Breathy breezes whisper across the curve of an ursuline eye, Jostling eldritch sleep into dreams of spring. And who will know What end they meet After spinning around in life’s cycle? The bird brained eyes circling above will surely forget Even if death is, for a moment, reflected in them. For not even the moon’s rays shine Where Madonna and child wait out the avalanche.

It’s cold here; Ice winds howling across the curve of a blue world, Jostling snowbearded firs with white-knuckled hands. A song sparrow shakes, feathered fear on a branch. And prowling through the dead understory: the hungry lynx, Though there’s nothing left to kill. The blizzard holds everything between its teeth. But there is a place below this lichyard Under icy catacombs where small animal bones Sit hollow yellow against the blinding drifts. There is a place Between buried boulders, dormant seedlings, and wishful bulbs, Who guard the future in cream colored tissue. There in that small chamber, a still beating heart In a frost-embalmed corpse.

Annekke Van Gelder

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