"disassociation sonnet no. 1" by Emily Murman
shivering at night in lincoln park
I chew my sleeve. lights flit through the expanse
having come from the zoo, a boneyard
for some twenty thousand working hands
post-chicago fire. black eats like ash
for every day is funerary.
I’m a child again, flashbacks
floating out myself to bestiary.
red nose pressed to glass I love
stink of wombats, giraffe’s kiss, the naked mole
rat’s crepey folds, okapi’s purple tongue
but misery rips young flesh from bones:
left behind by teachers and classmates
crying hotly in the crowd, a specimen.
Emily Murman is a poet and educator from Chicago. She is currently working on her MFA thesis. Her debut chapbook, SHRIVEL + BLOOM, is forthcoming via Dancing Girl Press in 2021. As of July 2020, she is a reader for Monstering Magazine. Emily can be found on Twitter @emilymurman.
Related Posts
See AllLately, the cat has taken to purring every night around 9. Sometime he drools on his bright orange coat, sometimes he looks like tangled weeds. Last night, people saw northern lights in New Jersey. To
we know it only by its sound the vibration of its wings in the dark. we have tried to trace the chirp, trap it. closed all the windows, taken a broom to the skylight to shake it loose but all that fel