three poems

Cathedral Lichen scented—deadfalls’ punk rises in rain. I am not sure how else to be but yours. Crows name us beneath branches, shielded from the stalking sun. My body rises, feral. Cloudburst dirties your hair. Undersong of wayward fronds. And in the forest you are choir and clergyman. And in the forest wild roses tuck their heads. Even Here She Listens in the Dark for Threats In the backyard pool to be alone my mother floats naked in the moonlight. Later, I hear the door slip shut She reenters the home to sleep on the couch, this rearrangement rattling the heirloom quilts. This lie, this old myth, every family photo bowing on its nail hinge. Creatured I lay where deer lay each night, where grass bends like light. Warmth gummed to the earth. For each lustful tick, my skin explicit. I am a feast, famine’s finish. My blood honest, body ready on the glade’s bruised mud. Beloved, were we ever this wild? Were we ever two beasts, mated beneath the prying sun? Let us remember those rude bodies. I will be fur for you. I am hoof for you. I am on all fours for you. I wait, at the forest’s edge, eager, out in the clearing. —

Lauren Davis is the author of the chapbook Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press). She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and her work can be found in publications such as Prairie Schooner, Spillway, and Lunch Ticket. Davis teaches at The Writers’ Workshoppe in Port Townsend, WA, and she works as an editor at The Tishman Review.