Abigail Cloud

On the use of Gonepteryx rhamni (Linnaeus, 1758) concerning your manner of death

Forget the first instinct to consult
the death's head. Do not be so
transparent. Take to the woods.
Kneel to the burn barrel. Comb
through the underworld of August

scrub ivy and lift. When you feel
the minute pull of hidden feet
it is time to mouth your prayer,
to coax the brimstone book to open
flat to your palm. Observe the outer
margin’s deckle and do the usual

math. A clean edge is pure but silent.
Only tin gods could want a death
so wet and frozen. Hope for a yellowing
edge the hue of warmth. If the apex
creeps brown, you must rebuild
your cells. If you find a costal margin
shredded like a thresher-caught gown,
do not just assume any apocalypse

but your own. Reverse your violent
path. Follow the vines embedded
in the forewing. A throbbing trunk:
a firm constitution no matter how
many minor frailties. They embrace
the discal eye; stare back. My God,

how cavernous the universe’s memory.
How wide your hand’s span, its inner
glow—You’ve lost yourself to the looming
cell, and this we fear, the tearing away
of conscious, the drift of our finite ken.
If in any moment, your untender hooks

flake the scales or tear along a vein, re-
place your specimen at once and retreat.
You are still alive, still alive, still alive.

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Abigail Cloud is the Editor-in-Chief of Mid-American Review and teaches full time at Bowling Green State University, from which she received an MFA. Poetry credits include The Gettysburg Review, APR, Pleiades and The Cincinnati Review. Her poetry collection, Sylph, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize and was published in 2014 by Pleiades Press.