Painted, She Wars

Two red birds of the south collide 
in a sky of mountains and men 

in long canoes and peonies 
as if they were leaving to copulate 

among disembodied objects. 
With her granddaughter she is too young 

to remember missing a leg and paints 
her body orange wondering how the trenches 

in Normandy compare to silver hair 
and wrought iron bed posts. Her sobs 

escape around the kitchen fountain 
to coniferous hills or does sound scatter 

and drop after passing through 
the window screen? Do bodies 

stir dust and fall into snow? She rises 
one morning with gold feathers 

on her neck her voice a scratched 
turntable she wonders from when.

Nathaniel Vincent Mohatt | Mudlark No. 42 (2011)
Contents | Fluorescence