One Poem by Gail Little

 

Cyanide and Apples 

 

I went to sleep under an ancestral spell

Interred, entombed, preserved in DNA

I went to sleep to dream my prophecy

Again, as always, of old growth forests

 

I do not want to hear an engine start

I want to breath like paper being crumpled 

I want to hold my breath until 

Until the wad of paper condenses to a seed

A seed watered in the warm earth of my mouth

 

A tree must grow with the red wood of my tongue

The dawn will not touch my tomb

I will be cloaked and covered. Evergreen.

 

 

Gail Little has been in love with language her whole life. She enjoys studying languages both ancient, modern, and constructed. She previously wrote under the name Abigail Ashing.