Michael Beard
Image by JPlenio from Pixabay
Michael Beard (he/him) currently studies poetry at the Bowling Green State University MFA program and serves as the managing editor for Mid-American Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Moon City Review, the lickety~split, and other places. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram @themichaelbeard.
Proximity
We beg for the red spruces to tell us where our hearts end, as if
knowing would mark us further, blue stripe of a mallard’s wing,
the river’s widening banks.
We bare our stomachs to the sky
chewing on the last good day of fresh mango because what else
can we do when the air feels restless on our skin, stretches of wet
moss at our backs as we fold away from nightfall.
Our bodies are the maps we come back to,
thick slabs of our tongues, ground spit. The mosquitos carry our
blood to new reaches, the whole forest blinking. To think we have
all of ourselves is absurd, evening sun in our eyes.
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