Backwards
Brick to dust, ore again
to its hollow veins,
glass to sand The trees
again, and the birds
backwards to roost
The thrilled grasshoppers
in pelts of grass
Here are the rivers
thrashing with fish, floodwater
brimming, oh mineral, oh
disease
Buffalo and weather
Thickening weather, the ocean
thick as oil The sun
cutting, beckoning
come to me
The earth
calling to itself, all
the stars calling
to each other, again
again Everything
unbuckles: water, grain
virus
Oh my heart,
all the made
is unmade
and gallops to the center—
the only
place left; every other place
is erasure, every other place
is particle—
which is home
Isn’t this sex Isn’t this
the final Glory Was I ever
a name
After
Will there be a memory
of structure
of tree apart or
one foot in front of
the other
a flock of birds
dividing a bird
then a bird’s eye
watching another a feather
the
rolled stem of a feather
and the fan of threads along it each a
different length
each an each how we will miss
the separate branches and the voices
among the branches calling return
return what
will we be when
there is no we only
the singular element
what
will It be without longing
without the arched feathers
of the throat which seeks
another
Danica Colic teaches at Hunter College, where she also received her MFA degree. Her poems have recently appeared in Terrain.org, and are forthcoming in Arts & Letters and Pebble Lake Review.