ASPASIOLOGY
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Ely Shipley in Response to Michelle Detorie

Hatch (after Feral Poppies)
 
Weight of root. Breath carrying a word. Upward. Ask for help. Will to be. A stump. Dew beads, clusters. Tears grown over my eyes. Mushrooms. Damp beats against cap and stalk. White shoots through left ribs. I trust because something like fur still undulates around me. Later, a child
 
collects bones, calls them coral. Wrapped in seaweed. One day we are a parasol. One day we are a doll. I’m not supposed to know my reincarnation. No one is. But her look said: It’s okay. Cry. Her look held me. Like wind. A word. Quiet on the page. Friend a reflection in each waiting crystal. A forest under snow.
 
 
after Poem
 

Crystals glisten
teeth. Hungry, I mine for
something softer. Stream
 
gurgling, angel panting, bat
spun up, black cocoon. Wish for
 
a sun asleep inside. Glance
backward, alight in spider silk.
 
 
 

​Ely Shipley is the author of Playing Dead, forthcoming from Nightboat Books; Boy with Flowers from Barrow Street; and On Beards: A Memoir of Passing, a letterpress chapbook from speCt! Books.

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