Michael Meyerhofer

Dear Stillborn

So much I wanted to tell you
about airplanes, how strings can
become music or stitches that hold
by making wounds of their own,
those line-dancing ninjas
we call electrons, times we hid
under school desks carved from trees
older than the Constitution,
how the Magna Carta was written
on the skins of dead sheep,
the orgasmic shudder of opening jars,
the strangeness of teeth,
chocolate, the history of whales
and bullets and telescopes
though mostly, I just wanted to say
that yes, flashlights die—faster
than people who wither like ribbons
of magma punted into space—
but isn’t it something how
a single knuckle of flame makes
the whole dark sphere recoil?

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Michael Meyerhofer is the author of five books of poetry—including What To Do If You’re Buried Alive (free from Doubleback Books). His work has appeared in The Sun, Missouri Review, Southern Review, Brevity, Rattle, and other journals. He’s also the author of a fantasy series and Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more info and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit troublewithhammers.com.