Bad River Reservation, Wisconsin
On the eastern band, the wind off the water freezes the sap in its lines. When it grows too
cold the hens down the road take to shrieking in their coop. There is nothing to do about it.
The way the shell of an egg carries the soul of the bird. How it is best to nest the halves in
the garbage beside onion skins, heels of bread. It is possible to wake every morning and
not know where you are. It is possible to be another person each day and not know it, to
cover the whiteness of your skin with cowberry, currant, wake and see another face. Forget
the word spider. Vow never to kill another. Say the name you were born with is bitter on
the lips. Cut down every tree that blocks your view of the sun.
Sara Gelston's recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Hayden's Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois and is the 2012-2013 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.