Cerelia Lesko is a poet from Illinois. She is a student at the University of the South in Tennessee where she rings bells and wanders through the woods. She studied for a semester in Dublin. 

 

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Roadside Detritus

 

i.

 

Little lost fawn – 

frozen there

on the double yellow,

hooves stutter-stopped

on snow-smeared asphalt

your eyes black with fear,

still wet with hope.

 

Now your spotted hide’s stiff,

flesh made holey

by an infantry of worms

maggots writhe along the ridges

of your half-exposed skull.

 

I wish you could’ve seen the spring.

 

ii.

 

Soft starved coon – 

stripes so sorry,

skin so thin that

sharp ribs jut out.

You never knew

a time of plenty.

 

Acid hunger cuts your belly

you try to cross the street,

to the bins gleaming with scraps – 

has no one ever taught you

to look both ways?

 

Your spine

piecemeal,

your ribcage

crumbled,

your body

decomposed.

 

Fur matted with mud and viscera,

cracked open, wind whispers over cartilage,

you’re not enough to fill a coyote.

Little hands together

like a prayer – 

who will say your eulogy?

 

iii.

 

Pretty gutter ghost – 

body just a windchime,

beetle-eaten skin.

 

Who left you for the worms in this culvert,

raggedy December blue dress

spotted with blood and dirt,

with gravel and chicory petals?

Your mama still whistles

like the songbirds to call you home.

 

Bottle blonde, eyes

the green of creeks

gummed up with algae scum and tadpoles,

river softened glass shine – 

no one closed your eyelids.

 

Dear Martia, you can sleep now – 

the grass grows up

between your leavings –

 

it will keep you warm.

 

 

Light

 

There’s a firefly

caught

in my throat.

 

You put it there

as we sit around the November hearth,

watch the sticks crackle and burn – 

our blood sluggish as the iced-over creek outside.

 

You’re a constellation, a candle, a streetlight – 

stars asleep in your eyes,

moths flock to your freckled cheeks – 

your fever dull winter skin.

 

Willow boughs bend to the ground,

ghosts rattling through the panes – 

the whiskey you sipped

slips into the splits of my lips.

It burns like hell.

 

We’ve no bodies but lanterns, lungs brittle as glass.

 

 

Pause

 

Wait for me on that nothing night in September,

 

where rotting leaves

hang from their boughs

but don’t yet fall.

 

where the sun stretches your shadow, like

saltwater taffy stuck in your aunt’s pockets

full of lint and stories.

 

where the dusk unspools in silence,

takes your hand and holds you back

to watch each peony blossom fall apart.

 

Maybe in the twilight, we can stretch one moment more.