Emma BoldenConfiteor from NER 41.2 Buy the issue in print or as an ebook Under the bloomed moon I forged & fortuned, I saw all the forests as leaves, as the wind that broke between& over & into. The force of nature as the force of beauty sweet as a betrayal, the once which carries within its own never & never its own more. I tried to voice loud. Tried for star or startle. I tried to find a space solid & grounded. A stone. A trunked tree. A place to hold my feet to the fire I swore still burned inside. I bled my time into borrowed, bested & night-wet & begging the sky wide for any sweetness I could worship into speaking like a god would, like a fire inside unframing the body some body built as an else for me. I walked, well-wooded & nightlit. I sought salvation or at least explanation. Or at least an excuse for. The force that runs these legs & the body they carry is never an answer. The clearing opens into its existence as a clearing only. Why am I unsated, so hungry with expectation? Any word a god would speak is a word no human could understand. I listen to the slick dark & its oceans, its feathered furies, its glints that may be eye, that may be teeth. I am not a thing like the world. & the way it whirls its winds forward. It spurts in gnats & bark, folds its being back into itself until its god tells it to begin, begin. I may be, but I have no part of its sweetness. Its greenrise. Its again. Again. Share this:TwitterFacebook