by Natalye Childress
you are a diamond-shaped
lustre of limestone —
a stratum of sediment, swept
in / along a coursing river and
cast up in this place,
watered and weathered.
you are a pale mountain,
transparent in the light,
a polymorphic presence,
marble-mottled and unmoved,
your impurities as
opaque as your motives.
you are crystalline — born,
transformed — an order-disorder
sparkle-shine deposit, an
eroding illusion of mild-mannered boy
forged in and of this expressway-adjacent town.
(“there are dolomites and dolomites”
and you know what i mean when i say
there are many ways to mine a quarry.)
Natalye Childress (she/her) is a Berlin-based editor, writer, translator, and sad punk. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears or is forthcoming in Querencia Press, Frozen Sea, wildness, Anthropocene, Bruiser, and elsewhere. https://www.natalye.com/