Mongering

what is the space
between the brackets when
the sky bruises easy?

I am tired of pretending
pink where much is grey.
There are no lions

this side of the fence
yet we carry knives,
whisper the beasts

asleep like he himself.
I want to rest the dust,
quell the stampede

that makes animals wince.

I do not know where
to store broken tile
and chipped teeth,

all the words I
forgot in pauses—
the blossomed place

where flowers fell
in girl’s hair
like butterflies.

I am experiencing
the taste of fury,
the nanosecond

of red before we
landslide purple
and brown and blue.

Allie Rigby is a Bay Area poet and educator with roots in the chaparral of southern California. Her poems are published in the 2019 anthology The Kerf Seeks, Manzano Mountain Review, Cholla Needles, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Open Ceilings.

Her poems flicker between encounters with the wild, the tamed, and the awkward. Her big project right now is The Herd, as featured on her website.

[image: Dark Stampede | Daniel Martinez]