Forest for the Trees
Your phantom limb cradled the newborn lamb—
charcoal hooves shined & polished, gnarled bleating
echoing among the diamond coos. Sipping Pepsi
from a plastic straw while smoking Leika cigarettes.
Lamplight spurs through white-curtained windows,
chanting on about the ends of things, our desires,
our exhalations in the hushed evenings where we sit
beside their cleaved openings perfuming the summer
with our tiny crafted deaths. Shepherd guiding the wolf
through the godless field. The sky’s wound blistering
& wilting, peonies sprouting from our shoulder blades
like the slivering of smoke scalpelled from the stars.
The lamb lowered & placed gently on the grass—
away into the swaying stalks, our bodies orbiting
pitched needles, the crackling of the holy crickets,
our crystallized foreheads against the cool glass.
The lamb’s white coat dissipating into the unknowable.
Sauntering quietly into the dream, eyeing the forest
for the trees—those spectral ladders, this spackle
of a white particle, quenching the ecstatic dark,
from which you were never born
Brennan Sprague studies creative writing at MCC.