Today I Have the Gumption
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

I’ve never stood naked beneath the moon,
or touched a molting bison, however,
my poetry, like all hearts, beats memento mori
with every line. I have experienced
suddenly moments, and a witch once scratched
me with her nail.

That last one may or may not be true,
I’m having trouble remembering, but there is
a scar on my left arm and I don’t know how
it got there, and it itches sometimes, and I’m
pretty sure it’s from a witch who sits on a chair
in my dreams, but again, my memories
are all flux and flow.

I like the rumps of deer—their white tails
flickering as the leap away from the side of the road,
I like my raven colored hair streaked with the color
of old bones. And sometimes, when I sleep, in the stilling
and folding in, I feel the moon stuck in my body,
and she’s naked, as always, and sometimes
she circles widdershins through my ribs just for fun.

Morning doesn’t rush, cows spread dew with every step,
and belladonna is one of my favorite words, so
I keep some in a tincture on my windowsill.

A bee that bumps into a bell just hard enough
to make it ring—that’s me in a nutshell–
a thirsty, broken, wine cask, a mingling among
snails and moss, a little crack in a fence, although,
sometimes, when the night is at its most silent,
I feel like I am a goddess of ghosts.

Today I have the gumption to dance without music,
and my eyes are open like the owl’s at sun set.
I am going to lift my head, that can barely support
these horns, and shape shift into my own life,
because, you see, a wolf is coming towards me
with a bandaged paw, and I know what I must do.