Therese Gleason
SELF-PORTRAIT AS WARMING PLANET
The sky burning from the top
down, ocean a churn of cinders.
My brow molten, I hiss, spitting
lava into the smoking sea.
Singed feathers float. Which way
is up? Fish gasp, dolphins pant. I flush,
sweat, cry. Don’t even try to deny it.
Once a friend wrote I can make a bird
fly out of your mouth backwards. I wish
I could do that. Put things in reverse.
Right things. My ovaries are misfiring,
brain aflame. How will birds fly
with a hole in the sky? A gull pecks
my right temple with a sharp beak.
Is it still a menstrual migraine
if you no longer bleed? The Bible
says the body is a temple, to go forth
and multiply; the earth is also a body, ergo…
My skin cracks. It’s the end of pink,
of green, fields barren and dry.
The plates of my skull rumble,
tectonic—although I know
this pain can’t kill me, I don’t know
if I’ll survive. Soon I’ll be invisible.
A jagged line rends the curtain of sky,
the horizon rising. Is it too late to beg,
apologize? My last kiss blisters
the world goodbye.
*the phrase the end of pink is borrowed from Kathryn Nuernberger’s collection of the same name