Laura Navratil





	Laura Navratil

	Ascent
	The ceiling burns the roof of the mouth Underneath the lift of barren Architecture. Sistine. Pristine. Except Generations fail in the rafters. Soft as newsprint the absence of motored Air. Something fulsome about it all.

	Untitled
	living on dayold bread spread with beans straight from the can with a finger on a bare strippeddown mattress on a bare dustcrossed floor been lightning but no thunder trails behind

	Idol
	Like a scarecrow in a cucumber bed, which guards nothing, so are their gods of wood, overlaid with gold and silver. Letter of Jeremiah 6.70 [apocrypha]
		you defend the sprouted gardenfruits in neat sequence. tremble imperceptibly against wound wind. time. cucumbers wax. crows hover in shadow. your faded cast-offs decay. each thread unbinds its neighbor after sun and its descendent, rain. summer relinquishes its heat. to what end, this scaring.

	__________ Laura Navratil is from Naperville, Illinois. She is currently an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Alabama, where she is an assistant poetry editor of Black Warrior Review.