You’ll find my body
barefoot and nowhere
with the nightgown I wore as a child
wrapped like a net or blanket
on the river’s surface where
I trap carp, fool’s gold, a rock
steady for standing, a mirror
that doubles as a door when it’s time,
when my pockets sag with kindling
and skulls of field mice. When
I have stacked firewood
in the shape of a perfect lung.
Find the star that opens like a jaw.
Find the jaw that bites hard
on the Hemlock bark.
Sit with me and I’ll sew you
a crown of pine needles and moss.
I’ll show you where to put your foot,
how the roots cling to the slope
of the hills sculpted by ancient rain.
This is how I hang
from my own fleeting. My own sun
beating its chest in the understory.
Beating its head into mud.
Carrie George (she/her) is an MFA candidate for poetry at the Northeast Ohio MFA program. She is the graduate fellow at the Wick Poetry Center in Kent, Ohio, where she works with visiting writers and teaches poetry workshops throughout the community. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her work has appeared on Poets.org and in journals including sidereal magazine, The Emerson Review, Gordon Square Review, and Watershed Review.