Myths

Danielle Pieratti

The sun: definitely a woman

has a hand in it.

A bee: backwards spear

of warrior, borne backwards.

Goodbye ocean: asleep at your lathe on the back

of the world.

Goodbye leaf: footman hushed and

nearing the center.

Lightning: we ​told​. Thunder, too. (And when

the snow came,

we praised the world’s pretending.)

Forgotten: return of summer-dry grass,

earth’s brow bleached

of color, the poison- ous white.

Birds in flight: a promise of possible.

Fish their gills, too.

At last, the moon

in her phases: lady undoing

her gown to please us.