Divination, Sky

Wendy Miles

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A spool of smoke unwinds across the sky.
Crow clack, cicada, bodies open to the sky.

In 79 AD ash and roasting heat seal an envelope
around Herculaneum; they look but find no sky.

But the heart remains. See it telescope the chest,
long for the moon’s pull, that flight to the sky.

Cyrano knew it—the little magnet in the boat
rocking, hands around the ball, heave of the sky.

Archaeologists excavate a woman: gold bracelets,
divination of pelvis, childless, arms closed to the sky.

I know her. Bracelets tinkle, soles scald on ash.
Her Vesuvius—black caldron dumping the sky.

In a room I dream—a painting of a little blue boat.
Outside the yard is bristled weed, busted rock, sky.

 

Art by Daniel Toby Gonzalez

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A finalist for the 2013 Perugia Press Prize and a three-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize in poetry, Wendy Miles has published multi-genre work in Arts & LettersSouthern Poetry Review,  storySouthThe Chattahoochee Review, and Memoir Journal. Wendy teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia.

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Published
Categorized as Poetry

By Miciah Bay Gault

Miciah Bay Gault is the editor of Hunger Mountain at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She's also a writer, and her fiction and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Sun Magazine, The Southern Review, and other fine journals. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont with her husband and children.