I have to step away and let myself break
to let it go
like I’m a ghost hanging from the wall (putting my head
in the mouths of ghosts
I’m a million tiny birds walking
silently on snow
when the weather changes the animals change
even while missing, while failing at not-sure-what
the city landscape comes into view:
(and they want to act like life isn’t vanishing
into a thousand daggers
I am a tiny moth
sliding between the windowpane
pirouetting on the tips of blades /white as chalk
I come home to cry between classes (so deep in the forest
my mother and father /standing
stuffed down my throat like a dry riverbed
like a car left running
at the edge of the woods
(I will do it all again /full of pinion pines
with no one inside (even if just in reflections
and fix the mordant drawings, replace the ferns with bracken
dumping my heart on the floor…
Donnie Hollingsworth has been publishing poems for 20 years. The most recent ones are “Dada Def Poems” in May of 2021, 2020’s “No Language” out of Boulder Weekly, “This Dithyramb” and “Genesis,” published in Chinook out of Otero Junior College. He teaches English Composition and Art at Lamar Community College, residing in Lamar Colorado with his wife, cat, and dog.
Artwork: deviantart.com/donnie-hollingsworth
Shop: IacchusGoods
Twitter: iacchus_c
His second chapbook can be purchased here.