Thin Air Magazine

Skip to content
Menu
  • THIN AIR ONLINE
    • SUBMITTED WORKS
      • FICTION
      • POETRY
      • NONFICTION
    • STAFF CONTENT
    • FLAGSTAFF LITERARY EVENTS CALENDAR
  • SUBMIT
    • SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
  • ABOUT
    • MASTHEAD
    • STORE
  • Archive
Home
Search

Two poems by Kristin LaFollette

  • by Thin Air Staff
  • Posted on July 16, 2020

Women

When I think of you, first you’re honeycomb
& milkweed, then a stack of white plates
with blue borders—

I grew up not afraid of guns because you
taught me not to be afraid:
Hunting is eating &
together we find and take the marrow—

As a child, you would take me with you
to the woods to help pull an animal
into the back of the truck, drape it with a blue
tarp, watch as the others washed the blood and
mineral off their hands with cool water from a jug.

In some ways, my fingers still hold the moss & clots of mud & leaf,
a smell like muscle & lung left in a field,
heat rising like heavy winter breath—

There’s new language, and I know it because of you.
My voice is only what you’ve made it to be:
Apostrophe & lemon & brick—

We are both branches in the shape of antlers still
attached to the skull of a deer,

bone submerged in borax,
smooth & upright like crystal—

Rhythm

I hear cicadas falling
from the trees outside
my house, their firm
bodies striking the
concrete like minerals
& birdseed.

Once, my dog shoveled
a live cicada into her
mouth and held it
there, her teeth a
cage for the panicked
flapping and flitting—

Here, the dead insects
on the sidewalk smell
like rainwater I can
carry in my skin,

a humidity like wet cotton.
We’ve moved so many times
that I no longer know
the difference between

cicadas in this state and that.

All I see are their white,
upturned bellies, iridescent
eyes and shells, wings like
tissue paper & cheesecloth.

Yesterday, the tree outside
my living room birthed
five of the cicada bodies
and I thought, for a moment

that if I peeled back the bark
and shoved my hands inside
that maybe I, too, could be
born again—

 


Kristin LaFollette is a writer, artist, and photographer and is the author of the chapbook, Body Parts (GFT Press, 2018). She is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana and serves as the Art Editor at Mud Season Review. You can find visit her website at kristinlafollette.com and Twitter at @k_lafollette03

Posted in POETRY, SUBMITTED WORKS, THIN AIR ONLINE, Uncategorized, WEB FEATURES

Post navigation

Prev Two poems by Olivia J. Kiers
Next Three poems by Romana Iorga

Archives

Thin Air Magazine is a non-profit, graduate-run literary magazine published by Northern Arizona University

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • THIN AIR ONLINE
  • SUBMIT
  • ABOUT
  • Archive
Website Powered by WordPress.com.
Press Enter To Begin Your Search
×