Milla van der Have

swarmed, I’m sure

think yourself a catastrophe of birds
a billowing of a cry into a raw set of teeth
eating everything, like a darkness

say you are grief, the kind that slowly melts
away the resistance of feathers and so
the fall becomes what keeps you close

say you are the outrage of what you can touch

think yourself a possibility of summer, not
the one of dogs panting against a backdrop
of veinlike streets but the real one, a blazing

of shoulders and hamstring and sudden
burst fruit

say you are a resurrection of snakes, waylaid
and muscle-bound, like traces of wildfire
on unbearable roads, yes think yourself fang-like,

twenty centuries of sorrow but say you are
rattling not like a warning but like a charm,
a clear sound to create new things by, nesting

inside you, snug and silk, a shadow moon

________________________________________________________________________________________

Milla van der Have is a Gemini. She has been published in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter and Cutbank, among others. She’s has two chapbooks: Ghosts of Old Virginny (2015) and the Spanish-English Avistamiento de ballenas (2021). Milla lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands. She is the host of Poetry Lit!