Niina Pollari

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Little hairs on your arm, on your back
cringe wildly with the wind.  Slick rain
brings the oil scent back, it mingles with the green
to make something new, a hologram. 

How to build fire?  In the rain?  How to kill
and cook a thing and afterward lay its bones down
without ritual?  Wonder how will it come.

The answer is: in a blue sky made thunderous
it will come.  In a desert spreading outside, in the garbage
that mounts in a glossy heap it will.  In the wrinkles that form
in your degenerating brow as the years hobble on,

and in the way you have to name the things you name.
So dress now for your human occasion: fig leaf
and face mask.  In one hand the new pencil,

in the other a blank sheet for a map.  Draw
whatever you want, honey.  It doesn't matter now.

Niina Pollari is a writer and translator of Finnish.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bateau, Post Road, Chaffey Review, Weave Magazine, SUB-LIT, Taiga, and others.  She edits the online lit review At-Large Magazine.