Fainting sky today pulls at the
ground, trying to find color.
Why is saw blade made?
Zig-sag of teeth against
my grain, my gain, my rain, my rein.
Nailing words on trees in the forest, leaves
sursurrate like pages, but can’t read for themselves.
Trembling upward, wing-over-wing, all the birds called home,
Halving the music, having it fly upward with them, they
bother the stratosphere with all warbling and winging—
quilling sky.
Xanthic eyes
pored over every memory of you. Poured myself. Poored my own memory
operating away from itself.
Kindling catches, but there’s no more wood for this fire. This fire
exacerbates the cold,
cakes itself all over these hands
until they’re not hands.
Re-enter. Something can be worked out.
Justification by feint, by faint, by fifth, by filth.
Love me past
and forward, but not now. Now I’m a
demon for saw-teeth and nails
instead of words. When we were
younger we read poets, we were bright
versions of our jaundiced selves.
Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Rattle, Shenandoah, Margie, Christianity & Literature, and Gargoyle. She teaches creative writing at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas Books, 2008) and a chapbook of poems about angels, Neither Prayer, Nor Bird (Finishing Line Press, 2013).