Whip the Bones by Melissa Wiley

This is how she bakes her body into a soufflé. Without access to bowls, eggs, or oven, she crosses her arms into a knot tied with ligaments. She stares at pillows cross-stitched with leaves hardened into lemons. Only the leaves are attacked by butterflies, she can’t help but notice. The leaves have no trees while the butterflies are monstrous.
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It had an eye like a glossy blackcurrant, dead and alive.

The previous night had all been a low rise motorway service stations with a mysterious enemy jet flaring NASA sized nostrils as they skimmed the terrain and away.

Stands rigid
on one pale leg,
the other tucked

its brown wings,
a piece of bark
fallen onto grass.

It does not fly,
keeps the ground
close to itself

Cool blasts of slow fluorescence
Drop vague never-shifting shadows from
Filing cabinets desks computers—
Shadows like humid
Visibility, air
You can see, like refugee
Rain clouds inspissipated in this
Funereal, strangely
Unreal place—
And moving with members
Of the staff reveal
Visual transitions
Somewhat forbidden.
More light than heat.

poem #4, "FLOOD MY BLOOD"
i extend my arms
okay
a man raises his and
they fall
from 2" past my elbow

clinging to the roots
of the wild onions pulled
from the garden each spring.
Holding fast to thin white
filament, heedless the
whole enterprise is failing;
resolute, even when shaken—
refugees quietly settling the
shallow lines of your palm,
still hopeful for asylum
in the murderous country.