My first burnt bark child—flung to the windless flames
Second sly child—dressed for weather, swan skinned
Serpents impress diamonds into my salt shoulders
This composed with the Devil’s black forked feet
He wants them back, sunk in hot white ink
Tentacles; mother-hunger hundred-mouths; the drift and
night-closures
Number one child, the jawbone I packed for you, axe-bright
Number two child, that hard set of hooves, elegant, horse-swift
Recall that one midsummer squall, us the color of water
The shock of hail: the sky astonished, dropping all its blind white
eyes
Copyright © 2015 by Sun Yung Shin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 23, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.