One cabbage’s veiny soul—
someplace for a hand to rest.
What did the prophets say?
If we know ourselves, we know the future.
A cabbage is a cosmos, a break of its leaf—
a crunch in some milky way,
in the ozone layer of the eye,
nose droops over mistakes,
veils them from permanence.
Kerchiefs wrapped onto a falling tree—
definitive and soft crumbling.
Madina Tuhbatullina is a poet from Turkmenistan, whose work has been published or is forthcoming in Anacapa Review, Perceptions, Ponder Review and elsewhere. Madina is an alumna of the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop and Tupelo Press Manuscript Workshop. Currently, she is a Creative Writing MFA candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.