Transom this shortest song:
a cavern shirks the body from its path,
where my mother has chewed a magpie to blood.
Once the recipient of store-bought lace,
she’s a moth draped with bone.
Her ancestors, however mild,
are bitten through.
Mine were always chafed, improbable.
So the beginning is not this scribble—
about the beginning and some light,
but a god who tasted plain as milkweed,
with all the light spooling from his verse-thick marrow.
Erin Elkins Radcliffe is originally from Indiana and now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Hopper, and Coal Hill Review. More of her work can be found at www.erinelkinsradcliffe.com.