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.