Kaitlin Neal

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Magpies on Pine Needles

I found a circle
In the church basement
Of Mismatched chairs
And old faces

I was smoke at the time
Ghost of 18

Not looking for God
I knew he had abandoned me
In Alberta
Where the magpies perch on pine needles
And sing

But here in the
Church basement
Strangers told me
Years wasted
On hope
That they've had to bury
What's left
In blue tarps
If they didn't go up in flames already

My mouth was stuffed with cotton balls
And yours with spit

And the cats drank milk out
Of bottle caps that tasted
Like tar
Moonlit ribbons
Gifted an arm
To the plains

You were almost a daisy

Others told me you
Were a weed

I just knew you were my sister
Ghost of 18

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23 minutes

On Thursday walks
beyond the empty green,
among my parallel talk
with fevered cars
and gas pumps.
I wished for a plume
of smoke.

Peaking up
above the hills of dirt
mounted with windows;
reaching over,
reaching out,
like a pistol to the sky.

And I would take my time,
edge around the corners,
beg open-palmed
for the trail of black
to find its origins
in the caverns of a
home.

23 minutes
to wish between the school
and house.
It would wait for me,
to fall,
those 23 minutes.
Sometimes more
if I stopped to sip in
the fishless lake
or empty out the wrappers
into the wasp’s humble metal
home.

But the smoke who
craved empyreuma,
never belonged
to the singeing paper smiles
or melting lock,
nor the scent of
laundry,
thrown fit,
burning like a temperamental blanket.
And
I never saw her face burn bright;
steel-hot like her tongue,
and watch her eat the ash
of a home on fire.

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Great messiah of prairie lands

A child or less
raised
in your blood and
canola
my fur has grown soft
milk teeth rotted
jutting in the wrong direction

Oh lord
I left my ferality
upon the stones
bleach
the bones of this
beast
far and framed
beside the highway

Last I pray
great messiah of prairie lands
come and run with me
a creature
once more
under the sod-wet sky

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Fruit of the earth

A seed/ a face/ a root/ in me
beneath the waifs of skin
peel back with knife and thumb
revealed like a turnip in the dirt
is a body planted/ rotting/ waiting/ in me
with a voicebox like my own
made of mud and fertilized by worms
they carve songs in the tunnels of my
oesophagus
easily sliced in half —

i wished my body was a tree but it is an artichoke
no it is beetroot red buried in a pit with
arsenic appleseeds
my earth seems to spoil underneath
oozing no blood of Eden
even the rabbits have left their indents
carrying the caterpillars away
too grave this emerging
body/ being/ bastard

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Banner Art:
Photo by Eastman Childs, Unsplash, 2020