Madison Zehmer is a wannabe historian and emerging poet from North Carolina. She has published and forthcoming work in the Santa Ana River Review, the Origami Poems Project, La Piccioletta Barca, Ethel Zine, and Wards Lit Mag. She is on instagram @mirywrites and twitter @madisonzehmer, and her website is madisonzehmer.weebly.com.
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Cocoon
Wingspans of impulse without epithet
bite and ooze and churn; they found me seeking
and named me so, left me stuck in the unroot,
left me mistaking eagles for vultures waiting
to make me their dinner. Subterrain resounding,
engulfed by barbed-wire brambles, my heart
beats prematurely, one by one by one by three.
This place smells like Shenandoah, hurts like
Carolinas. Soaks me up dry, can’t spit me out,
can’t bear to. Its honey crystallizes on my
tongue. It tastes more squall than nectar.
If I knew where to look I would: down where
the dead things go, or above where they
hold vigil? Don’t tell me Earth is malnourished;
don’t tell me things I already know.
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