Wing

In the dreams of a dragon

heat sings, fire, crackling bones

a shimmer of scales and the smell

of hot mammalian fear,

a flash of prey refracted

sixteen times over

by faceted lizard eyes

When dragons dream, they call down

all seven senses, no mere technicolor:

sapphire, black and rose,

when the tongue is flooded over

with scalding feral blood, and the south-wind

draws a winged membrane with a

~ whoomp ~

into fullness, lean and proud

Rachel Westfall

January 13, 2012

Once you swam with me

I could write about how the night air

moved and shimmered, enveloping

the polluted river in a silky fog.

How our skin itched and crawled when we

pulled ourselves up onto the rocky bank,

and rubbed ourselves raw

with stiff, line-dried towels.

How our clothes clung and rolled up

against our clammy skin as we tugged them on,

and how we scrubbed our arms energetically

to try and tame the flocks of goose pimples

that hovered there.

I could write about who you were, then,

or where you've gone.

Or I could write about nothing at all.

Rachel Westfall

January 4, 2012