After “Monarch Buffalo Horn Cup,” a sculpture by Kevin Pourier
Why this object returns to me as I
(changed, now,
into an ill-fitting pale blue gown)
am slid
into the hollow of a magnetized cocoon,
instructed by disembodied voice to keep
perfectly still
I don’t know
but here, locked
behind the museum glass of my mind’s eye
this horn—discarded from ungulate shield-skull
blanketed by butterflies
inlaid in mother of pearl—
swarms orange,
filament-strung wings
ready to fly off with that
hollow of keratin and bone
through which a soft light shines
(as if from its own weightlessness).
Behind my eyelids
clenched against seeing
this tube’s smooth inner coils:
wings and wings and wings
fluttering in time to my breath,
to opening chords that blur through static
—Uncle John’s Band
and the jackhammer clatter
of the machine
stampeding
toward me
and I am holding
still, opening
my eyes to the blank white cave
on which half-dreams project
(they have wings…
—if I don’t move,
if I keep perfectly still)—
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 23, Issue 5.
Hannah Silverstein is a recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her poems have appeared in LEON Literary Review, Whale Road Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Terroir Review, The Ekphrastic Review, SWWIM Every Day, and The New Guard. She lives in Vermont.
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