The miracle of jet fuel
the burn and lift into clouds resolve this resolve that o deep pocket of sky guilty dirty I fly such joy in the loft! every uncontainable shore skitters and scalds below me clouds and contrails curtain the city fur highway lights two sleepy planes circle the night and one bright star once on fire too its light propelled across miles of time burning we burn flying over the coast that angles off into the bridgework and geometry of the built world the living dying starry world
Caelifera: The Chisel-Bearers
What did you give up for that iridescent wing? the larger sky the bowl of blue the arms of the grey brown giants who rule I wander and whistle in the forests of grass How do you hinge? such sharp departures so little oil I have leathery wings and veined wings claws spurs spines five moults brought me here
Do you course with Betelgeuse? are you made of circumstellar dust? haemolymph is what flows through me my grasshopper heart pumps and percolates my gin I most ancient of the chewing herbivores am a miracle of spiracles my midgut Malpighian tubules hum with the sun and rain of a million millennia
Winged walker how is it you hopscotch and skip what child lives within you? I launch myself into flight this is how I do it: flex, contract, extend bow and arrow I am
Do you ache when you sing? strumming into dusk I stridulate when I’m happy and the weather is lovely dry leg against dry wing I say Let’s have babies I say Let’s stick together I say I feel so very fine today
How do you know what you know? I set my setae and palps erect and sensing I keep my tympanal organ taut
Why weren’t you named Phosphorus or Flash or ssssssssssssssssssssssss for your incessant scissoring? What does your chisel do?
the chisel makes us us it burrows down into earth nudges away detritus we place our eggs in a pod glued with froth cover them over our chisels sharpened against death
Mary Buchinger is the author of six poetry collections, including Virology (2022), /klaʊdz/ (2021), and e i n f ü h l u n g/in feeling (2018). She serves on the New England Poetry Club board and teaches at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston. www.MaryBuchinger.com.