Laura Hirneisen

Aftershock

Wings from all my lovely doves Rapunzeled down,
hilled in their bottle shard nests,
more death than a small breath stolen.

You pinpricked my lungs in tenuous leak threads.
Kings descend on queens mossed like fallen trees.
Cruel empire unwinds, taken by bird beak.

Quill pulled from well, ink spilled,
metaphors stitched to my eyelids,
faces thieved from my head.

Seas dried and paid in salt blood,
races to conquer, you over me,
Portuguese as rivers I’ll never swim.

Laura Hirneisen’s poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Lavanderia: A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Word, Stirring, Arsenic Lobster, Thirteen Myna Birds, Caduceus, and other journals and anthologies. She feeds an occasional blog habit at http://laurahirneisen.blogspot.com.