Bush

The long-traveling thought,
knocking with the sunlight
and let in by the wind,
requests only being spoken,
but the bush—newly inhabited—
made a mind of—
can’t get the word out
and trembles with effort:
leaf-couples puckering
as with a piece of apple
in the teeth,
dimpling all over its foliage
as the chin
in frustration—
the bush’s simple equipment,
gummed up by a thing
as light as light,
coughs up a brown smoke:

a dozen house sparrows.

Prairie

And I’m just trying to prick it            small hole
to let the light through            —just so—
blurry grasses,             trees in tiny script,
hummingbirds flipping quickly…
the sun and the moon—the latter gone bad:
half blue—half cataract…
the wind shaving the top layer of the river
and pulling it back.     Remember last year’s fire—
that story?       Did you see it—          God mixing red
and black,        black and red, with a splayed brush tip?

Field

Over the hill, the goldenrods have flopped
and, lolling, lie, an undulating tongue
of yellow, yellow like swollen sunlight popped
and rained its rays on this good field and clung.
The only interruption is the tree,
the many-breasted walnut tree of green
united spheres that oppositely see,
now bouncing on the ground in fall’s routine.
As brown as meat between the molars, deer
delight in disappearing over the hill
where two hard-beating hawks too volunteer
to fall, screaming while being swallowed whole.
What might existence be like in the kiss
and squeeze of that throat’s muscular embrace?

Joi Haskins is a medical student and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her other work can be found in The Broadkill Review and Pacifica Literary Review.