Sara Henning
The Truths Only Starlings Will Speak
Wings rutting through dust like glittering,
hardened sky, I’m fool enough to believe
this bird’s dying, not sunning—body unfurling
like a gasoline stain, acrid iridescence rushing
asphalt that could fry an egg to savory silk.
I drop to my knees as he arches and lashes,
scapulars open as mantle feathers curl and lilt.
He’s a Japanese fan, throat tucked flush, tail
an untamed fractal spent as the heat striating
him. What pleasure it must be to fantasize
one’s way into the last murmuration, to be so
aroused by the whelm of convection to cede,
then pant, then roil. What a child I am. Last
month, palms down over my lover’s biopsy scar,
I searched the melanoma like the heat of us
laying ourselves bare—costal grooves docile
to the flood of keloid, lymph nodes feverous
in their recursion. Bending to this rapture
his skin was closing over, I could feel his fear
brackish as the lure of my touch. His body
a starling lifting under me, glitzing over
a sky that hushes and frets into the last,
unrelenting blue.
Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink 2013), as well as two chapbooks, Garden Effigies (Dancing Girl Press 2015) and To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press 2012). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Meridian, the Cincinnati Review, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, and RHINO. Winner of the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she is currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as an associate editor of Sundress Publications. Please visit her at her electronic home at http://www.sarahenning.net/.
Return to January 2016 Edition
Wings rutting through dust like glittering,
hardened sky, I’m fool enough to believe
this bird’s dying, not sunning—body unfurling
like a gasoline stain, acrid iridescence rushing
asphalt that could fry an egg to savory silk.
I drop to my knees as he arches and lashes,
scapulars open as mantle feathers curl and lilt.
He’s a Japanese fan, throat tucked flush, tail
an untamed fractal spent as the heat striating
him. What pleasure it must be to fantasize
one’s way into the last murmuration, to be so
aroused by the whelm of convection to cede,
then pant, then roil. What a child I am. Last
month, palms down over my lover’s biopsy scar,
I searched the melanoma like the heat of us
laying ourselves bare—costal grooves docile
to the flood of keloid, lymph nodes feverous
in their recursion. Bending to this rapture
his skin was closing over, I could feel his fear
brackish as the lure of my touch. His body
a starling lifting under me, glitzing over
a sky that hushes and frets into the last,
unrelenting blue.
Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink 2013), as well as two chapbooks, Garden Effigies (Dancing Girl Press 2015) and To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press 2012). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Meridian, the Cincinnati Review, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, and RHINO. Winner of the 2015 Crazyhorse Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she is currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as an associate editor of Sundress Publications. Please visit her at her electronic home at http://www.sarahenning.net/.
Return to January 2016 Edition