Shannon Castleton

just leaned over my thighs
pressed the folds of their scalps

as if gauging how ripe a peach true
I might have been preoccupied

the heat left little room in my body
I'd close my eyes to a ring of fire and the fire

was me the fire was an opening
and not to watch was like saying no

to watching a world open
and the world was mine the world

was inside me for months dividing suspended
within the globe of my belly

the one sure thing
I won't carry again before I die

After the sky grew dark
as an ocean, after the mountains
sunk into the sky,
after the moon dropped into
the mountains, and winding beneath them,

the road a black ribbon,
the black horse's hooves
sparking asphalt ahead of us

and after that, stars,
once the car had stopped
and its roof had torn off
and glass and the horse
had showered us, stars

when we crawled
to the side of the road, blurry
like stars and bleeding, the breeze
like the breeze of a lantern-lit night
and I said maybe while we wait
you could sing to me