A Throat Circus

 

By Lana Bella

 

 

Down she will come from

among the branches

and roots, feathered skirts

pulled from the many

birds of the meridian sea.

She disciplined hands,

forgetting an entire winter

of throat missing glass,

where sorrow and gin met

in the damp of thumb

and fingers. A version of

mad stretching towards

the chignon of a girl scried

down in the lake, mouth

snagged on briars' flints,

traveling her lips the better

to shape hymns of water.

 

 

A four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net & Bettering American Poetry nominee, Lana Bella is an author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 450 journals, Acentos Review, Comstock Review, EVENT, Ilanot Review, Notre Dame Review, Rock and Sling, & Lampeter Review, among others, and work to appear in Aeolian Harp Anthology, Volume 3.

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