Melissa Atkinson Mercer: Girl with Diagnosis or Gun
girl with diagnosis or gun, #7
this is where I crawl into meadows with an axe
where my tongue is one flower among many & the game is to find it | to make confession
though I root in unmappable silence
though my girl is a girl with the arms of a tree | a throat filling with mud
my girl who waits in the caves of dawn
inside a nightgown wet with skin
I’m saying the beetles ate through our kitchens & then we were here
the worms came at midnight to devour our sleep
& we wished so precisely | for mercy
though some of us try harder | some of us call this home
Melissa Atkinson Mercer is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Saint of the Partial Apology (Five Oaks Press) as well as five poetry chapbooks, including My Own Strange Beast (Porkbelly Press) and ghost exhibit (Glass Poetry Press). Her work has recently appeared in Menacing Hedge, Literary Orphans, Blue Earth Review, and others. She has an MFA from West Virginia University.
