afterburn

by jennifer militello

Things too thin inhabit our dreams and we take on
their starving. We live until hunger
takes on such a shape that it is shoulder blades
in everything and sounds up in the trees. Then,
such ghosts. Such bones without skins doubled over.
A starless night every night and starlessness
is ashes or newsprint on the hands. Living
is barely a flock of birds the way it moves
like falling; it must be the cure for something,
the last lit house on a dead end street
or a hunger with two minds, drawing children
to the damp sheds at the far fence of their yards.
There is an entire August storm in everything said,
and to open the violent hives of remembering,
we imagine marigolds, birds drowned in the creek,
the lights left on in a room left behind.