How a Plastic Bag in an Elm Tree on Winter St. Learned to Mimic the Moon
for Özge Lena

It’s growing in what was once the tree
with the great green room.
It’s singing in yogurt
and fluttering like an amorphous pearl
of necrosis.
It tilts at windmills
because we don’t pull the injured from harm,
we don’t triage battlefield evacuations
like Matabele ants who lick the wounded;
we watch the wounds grow
and grow
more volitile, crack and crevice
until branches bleach like coral
and all the leaves fall out

I say goodnight
and tuck my son in the blankets
so tightly

he can barely breathe.

 

 

Damon Hubbs is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Rimbaud’s Lighthouse, which was published by Naked Cat Publishing. His work appears/is forthcoming in Apocalypse Confidential, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Acropolis Journal, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Cutbow Quarterly and elsewhere. Twitter @damon_hubbs