Emily Rose Cole
The Witch of the West Knits Feather and Bone
I found him trembling at the base of a mountain,
blown in, as so many things are, on a storm.
He purled his fingers over the bough-bend of neck,
fur jeweled with rain, crimped face snugged under my chin.
I wanted to give him roots, to rid him
of those useless hands that couldn’t hold the earth.
I wanted to join his marrow to a tree’s silvering bark
so his blood would know the sap-taste of home.
So I followed the spell to the letter: pentacles
of salt and sagebrush, the monkey’s tail thick
in my fingers, blessed neck of a sapling birch
broken over my knee, the round mouth
of midnight bellowing at our doubled backs.
Maybe the moon was wrong, or the catch
of the wind. Somehow, a furred spine split
with feathers. Somehow, an ape
with the eyes of a crow. My mistake
the opposite of a taproot. I feel it
still, like a lesson scraped
into the nut of my skull,
how that first winged pulse hissed
no place, no place, no place.
Emily Rose Cole is a writer, folksinger, and MFA candidate in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her debut folk album, “I Wanna Know,” was released in May of 2012 and is available on iTunes and Amazon. She is the winner of numerous national poetry awards, including the Nancy D. Hargrove Editor’s Prize, a Sandy Crimmins Award and an Academy of American Poets University Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Jabberwock Review, Passages North, and Nimrod, among others.
Return to January 2016 Edition
I found him trembling at the base of a mountain,
blown in, as so many things are, on a storm.
He purled his fingers over the bough-bend of neck,
fur jeweled with rain, crimped face snugged under my chin.
I wanted to give him roots, to rid him
of those useless hands that couldn’t hold the earth.
I wanted to join his marrow to a tree’s silvering bark
so his blood would know the sap-taste of home.
So I followed the spell to the letter: pentacles
of salt and sagebrush, the monkey’s tail thick
in my fingers, blessed neck of a sapling birch
broken over my knee, the round mouth
of midnight bellowing at our doubled backs.
Maybe the moon was wrong, or the catch
of the wind. Somehow, a furred spine split
with feathers. Somehow, an ape
with the eyes of a crow. My mistake
the opposite of a taproot. I feel it
still, like a lesson scraped
into the nut of my skull,
how that first winged pulse hissed
no place, no place, no place.
Emily Rose Cole is a writer, folksinger, and MFA candidate in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her debut folk album, “I Wanna Know,” was released in May of 2012 and is available on iTunes and Amazon. She is the winner of numerous national poetry awards, including the Nancy D. Hargrove Editor’s Prize, a Sandy Crimmins Award and an Academy of American Poets University Prize. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Jabberwock Review, Passages North, and Nimrod, among others.
Return to January 2016 Edition