My ancestors
who piled stone & timber
to build their homes on the lochs
who smeared their faces woad-blue
who leapt over bonfires & slept
hugging spears to their chests
knew they’d made their houses
on the spine of an animal
that swam in a black ocean
they did not love nature
but they respected its tooth & claw
far from the bone-gnawing draft
of my ancestors’ crannogs
I stare up at the night sky & see
a mouth of numberless teeth
Jonathan Louis Duckworth is an MFA student at Florida International University and a reader for the Gulf Stream Magazine. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Fourteen Hills, PANK Magazine, Thrice Fiction, Cha, Superstition Review, and elsewhere.