Fold
I’m ill-equipped for my weather. A thin-skinned
fruit. All bruise. Someone feeds me peels
but I hoard them in the corner & make a nest.
I take a pill smaller than a peppercorn
so as not to lay eggs. I’m studying the cracks
in the sidewalk, the corners
of your mouth, avoiding small disasters. Winning
nothing back. I’m painting the smooth, fractured
shells, clean skulls. If I tattooed myself,
I’d choose the creature I’ve become. Then become
another. & another. This is how I hide
& where. When the sun comes up
I’m herding the gored, antlered
boys & sugaring their lips. We’re all so far
from home. In the old country,
we milked goats. Knew something
about the fields. In this one, we quiver
at the clearing’s edge & eye the onlookers
hungrily. No matter who we become or why
our stomachs will snarl. Our hair
will tangle in the branches
as we trample the underbrush with hooves.
Follow the trail of blood spattered leaves
& find us in a heap of breathing. See how rage
can be soft like this, like rotted
core. You may enter, here, & fall
among us.
Caylin Capra-Thomas’s chapbook Inside My Electric City will be published by YesYes Books as part of the Vinyl 45s Chapbook Series. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Fugue, Bat City Review, Willow Springs, Sixth Finch, Phantom Limb, ILK, and elsewhere. She lives in Missoula, Montana.