by Kelly Gray
I read the elephants are drunk
in the Yunnan Province,
sloshed and sleeping in the tea gardens.
Even if this were true,
imagine with me,
how bold they were to crush through villages and glass,
in the moments we turned our faces
to lay down with illness.
I heard the flowers are planning a supper bloom,
sending messages of blossom revolt.
Dandelions passing out scat and seed pamphlets,
Forget-Me-Nots working the corner fields,
red hearted Poppies blasting manifesto;
their headlines read
Free from Their Gaze.
In the canals of Venice
the water runs green with fish,
dolphins swim against stolen gold of Byzantium.
Turns out,
all lies for our salvaged hearts, and yet
I walk this forest,
resisting the urge to call it my own.
Today the ravens came,
seventeen of them
like black arrows through the sky,
flip tripping on the clouds so full of spring storm,
and all of us below,
renaming what was never ours to name.
Yesterday,
the vultures dropped down,
winking and descending low,
asking me, is today the day?
I remember the first time he took to my arm,
our mutual inquiry so close,
his broad wings wrapped around me,
prayer blasted sun,
me thinking, this is so intimate
to be caught in the vulture’s shadow,
his black embrace.
Noticing, his eyes like mine,
but this whole time,
it’s been me,
death
in a pink dress.
He’s been so kind,
letting me drive these
human roads
past the humility of his work,
thinking that these highways lead to forever.
Kelly Gray (she/her) is a writer, mother and educator living among the redwood trees on Coast Miwok land in Northern California. Most recently she's been published in The Atticus Review, Lunch Ticket, and Bracken Magazine. She has work forthcoming in River Teeth, The Nervous Breakdown, and 3Element Review. In the early summer of 2021, her book of poetry Instructions for an Animal Body will be published by Moon Tide Press. To read or listen to her work, visit writekgray.com.
