Chasing

The day begins with a box the size of a bean and
everything starry that can be placed inside.
Nowhere is it written that you can’t be a beast.
Follow me to the grind, where animals pull their
teeth and sweat to death. Follow me to the scraggly
whipworms who take nothing home that shines.

The day continues with leaves waving like furry
tails. Find kinship in plants’ mix of bud/fully
grown, and their evidence of wind.

The daily wish to express in shapes and lines,
tarnished to the bitter end, swallow the faded blue.

Custom-Made

The sky knocks its knee on a rock.
Vermillion stages a comeback. Woe
to all encumbering night, its stain
on all things useful. Whatever
twists inside has no core, only
muscle. We chip all the way across,
one down until we square and root.
A broken case is where we’re stored
for the whole story. We need birds
flying and blue sky. We need guts
flying like herring, silver and gray,
shining. Slippery made to fit.

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, New American Writing, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Series (Poets.org), Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Poetrysociety.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards. Currently, she lives and works in upstate NY. More at shiradentz.com