The prisoner swallowed the poison the starlings circled so menacing radiating an aneurism a horse tail of nerve endings the counselor’s theory was sheltered under an invisible angel’s wing parched tongue made up of evidence a distinct opposable thumb no stars in the sky when it’s time to take the medicine the troops have been summoned to police my brain start the questioning a constant winnowing of thought flapping lips and tongue exhausting a mask with no body floating in space behind the curtain let all of this be memory I want nothing from me to be missing
Ranee Zaporski’s work has previously been published in The Poydras Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, Stone Circle Review, Ballast Journal, and elsewhere. She currently lives and writes in Wisconsin.