Today's poem is Our Myths are in the Mosses by Jenna Rozelle. It is read by Mihku Paul.
Our Myths are in the Mosses
I was feeling like a scarecrow
overstuffed with brittle, tasteless fluff
topped off to the gag reflex with whatever this bitter drink is I’ve been binging
so I take in the sacrament of a red, red steak
and go out to walk the blood back into my veins.
I walk with a friend
into dark green woods.
We talk about the room where people sit before we’re reborn
you know, the one made mostly of light?
He takes a photo of me looking straight into the sun
and I’m warm.
We crash, clumsy, through a balsam thicket
using careless voices for such a careful place
and we jump a big fat doe.
We pause to watch her streak away to the East,
moments later we hear a shot.
I go back the next day, alone
to sink a little deeper
sit a little longer
to ask the moss to soak up all the noise I’ve made.
I find in my path a fallen branch
shaped like a fork-horned buck
and I’ve got my gun today
so I say “Okay” I’m ready.
I walk how a buck might walk,
cutting across the wind
its stories rushing through me.
I grunt and turn the earth with a hoof
scraping my own story there in the soil.
I bed downwind in the brown leaves
and wait.
Beech trees hold themselves together much more gracefully than me.
I try to wind my limbs around myself like that
but find I’ll need to grow another hundred years.
Fine,
I’ve got time.
I hear something fizzing in the ground all around
like I’m sitting on a hive of bees
like power lines - like a first date buzz.
It takes me a few minutes to focus my eyes and see the springtails, so small
popping around in the papery leaves.
Of course.
Silence is just us ignoring the roaring always underfoot.
I remember the myth of the hunter
the one I just started writing
right now.
The girl who’d had her fill of one world
so she looked in the pines for another.
The jays huffed and puffed at her
blue as a dying propane flame.
The squirrels screamed their machine gun screams
but it wasn’t as bad as the mean mean masses
she’d never even met.
She wove a tunic out of twigs,
wrapped a birds nest in her hair
wore a serpent round her wrist
to sniff the wind.
She chewed a wad of wintergreen
to mask her meaty breath.
She groaned like a swaying pine
and all was quiet.
She learned to cry so like a doe
in heat
that the coyotes circle in, chirping.
She sat under a tree and heard voices from the west
laughing
twigs snapping
and then, closer
the pounding of hooves.
She raised her rifle
A wand of earthly goods
metals, wood, and fire.
And shot the doe through the heart
the moment she stretched her movie star neck, collarbone, shoulder, thigh
from behind the emerald curtain.
She slipped off the golden robe
and forever wore it as her own
she swallowed her flesh
from ankle to nose.
She thought
“It’s good to be home.”
while she washed it all down
with milk warm from the teat
and left on the ground
the black waxy hooves
for mice and mushrooms to eat.
She turned the bones into buttons
the fat into soap
and plucked a snow-white hair from the tail
to float a silver hook,
to catch a speckled trout.
Every spring she listens
for the lost and orphaned fawns,
bleating, helpless, through the hills
and she nurses them in the greening valley grass
until they’ve drunk enough to run.