A haunting, after The Swan No. 9, 1915.
It is later
when we find the talon
sharp
like hunger
pushing into our afternoon
of dirt and disorder.
And we,
being young in superstition,
see the cotton ‘cumulate
dark and culling
being pulled back
by the talon
and her four sisters
cutting the sky open, orange at first;
an unearthing of new light, bleeding through
the darkness curling in,
oh, crimson.
We imagine,
a whispering in tongues
our ears wet with fear
a great burden of—
that legacy. Our hexing,
prismatically tearing through
September reds.
Naturally, we ran
past the picketing pines
out of the forest
back behind the windows
of which we pressed our small bodies against,
not so long ago,
with that collective ache
of youth, we became
bricked in.
We forgot to chuck the talon.
Send help.
Cass Lintz
Cass Lintz, a native of California, received her bachelor's in English from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has recently come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as too many cookies.