Untitled (Earth) — Koss

mother earth, in her shifting plates and spinning
transits her own aloof epic

the slow weep of canyons’ wounds
magnetic axis     drawing in quiet defiance 

and divorces of continents and their denizens
oh to be woo or new age or schooled  

in the healing grounding of earth’s bounties
its jaspers     so malachite     mustard     and red 

and then crystals’ ethereal qualities
beaming their light streams and starbursts  

entombing their own minute cosmos
then fossils’ ancestral properties  

their histories livered 
in mineral webs 

and for painters     earth’s gift of pigments
the richness of certain oxides 

warming ochers     the dependable inert
neutrals (slate) 

the inner radiance of venetian red
and don’t forget charcoal 

graphite     hematite     and leaded pencils
what they skirr over plastered 

pulp and finally    coal and oil 
and how they kill  

men back . . . and what of the dirt eaters . . .
their tongues’ divinations long lost

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Koss is a queer, mixed-race writer and artist with over 250 published or soon-to-appear works in 'zines such as Anti-Heroin Chic, Roi Faineant Press, MoonPark Review, Sage Cigarettes, Beaver Mag, and many others. They've been anthologized in Get Bent, Punk, Beyond the Frame, Best Small Fictions, and more. Their poem, "My Therapist Sez" won the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry award. Look for their chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect, from Diode Press in 2024.

This piece first appeared in Mom Egg Review.