You think for the echoing reason that thunder
startles your back, like a cat—wish you knew
where the fire was made.
Think of birds without wings, lazy atoms
in the mountain’s sunlit hair
waiting for sky.
Beyond, black stars bound
to perish in
endlessness. Flesh of time,
the ash-tide slowly
swells. Your pulse
drowns in it.
Stephen Massimilla is a poet, scholar, professor, and painter. His multi-genre volume Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the National Indie Excellence Award, and others. Previous books include The Plague Doctorin His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize), Forty Floors from Yesterday (the Bordighera/CUNY Prize), Later on Aiaia (the Grolier Prize), and a critical dissertation. He has recent work in hundreds of publications such as Agni, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, and The Southern Review. Massimilla holds an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School. For more info: www.stephenmassimilla.com and www.cookingwiththemuse.com
