Jen Rouse: Like Hungry Gods
Chambered
Unchallenged, you build
38 rooms around you, sealing
each for perfect buoyancy and
balance. You fill
your final spot with three
pulsing hidden hearts.
I know them now after 200
million beating years and you
are a Weston photograph,
trapped in the truest light.
You said I want to be honest
about this. I said you have feet
like hungry gods. And when
you rise in the shedding skin
of the moon, I am left
astonished. You are a Fibonacci
fragment. You are my last
living fossil.
Jen Rouse’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Pretty Owl, The Tishman Review, The Inflectionist Review, Midwestern Gothic, Sinister Wisdom, the Plath Poetry Project, Occulum, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. She has work forthcoming in Up the Staircase's 10th anniversary issue. She’s the 2017 winner of Gulf Stream’s summer poetry contest. Rouse’s chapbook, Acid and Tender, was published in 2016 by Headmistress Press. Find her at jen-rouse.com and on Twitter @jrouse.
