R K Fauth

October in Miniature

Once I read the earth
is landscaped by want.
A crime, you said.
Gorgeous, I said. You were
thinking bulldozers.
But I was thinking tides.
The reeds shied themselves
in the breeze, revealing the red
clay meat underneath. See
how a ravaged thing blushes—-
regardless of how its touched?
See how the iron claw rears
its rusted clutch. See how the moon
gnaws nightly at the crust.
All beauty moves mouthward. All mouths
gape towards awe. It doesn’t matter
which mouth, what’s left, or who saw.

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R K Fauth is the author of A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees, winner of the Walt MacDonald First Book Prize in Poetry (Texas Tech University Press, 2024) and finalist for the Audre Lorde Prize in Poetry. Her writing has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Poem-a-Day, AGNI, The West Trade Review, Plumwood Mountain Journal and elsewhere. Fauth's work has been supported by the Academy of American Poets, The Fulbright Program, Art Omi, The Oak Spring Garden Foundation and The Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. She lives in New York City.