NEW! Poem by Molly Bendall

Molly Bendall

ANIMAL HEIRS

If squinting made them
all sail steady,

I’d try to find them that way. Their oval terrain I’d learn. Who else
wants it? 

I’ve been stung
with a green heart and dragged

out backwards. That one snaps
and a year of ashes appear. Its bouldered head shifts and leans into its breeze.
Hoofprints deface

the little earth. Land of no requirements
and the sadness of not
listening. Sounds are just too wide. Here’s one who gallops against the rules. 

Aloneness is an image to work with so I sketch it
along the divots in the soil. I tick

gently to the voice-overs.

New members come around
lately, and I invite them
to see the armature. Because

now my knees are tired. Because now the faint reek
settles into musk. 

Because now I’m deaf
to where the clock leads me. 

Some are browsers

and frolic in an underworld.

The service there is witty. One sneers at
the hills folding against

the flat vista.
It huffs into its own squared chest. 

I could climb on its back and tour the lawlessness.