Cam McGlynn

Turning and Turning and Turning

after W.B. Yeats

I can only give you my two hands—swollen-knuckled and
quick-bitten. Fingers splayed, both prayer-shaped and profane. What

ways will we hew from hill to fell, invocations spilling to the rough-
tongued mothermaidencrone, the three-throated beast

crouched in me? I hold fields and fences ripped from their land. It’s
a cobbled-together path I weave with raw hands. Each reeling hour,

I stitch a new patchwork of ash and clay for us. Weeds come
to poke their bristled heads through our seams. I edge round

another curve and, muddy from an afternoon rain, the path at
our toes baptizes us from sole to shin. But like the last,  

these crossroads offers us no guidance. A sign slouches
west to east—arrows, like Dali’s clocks, dangling in the heat towards

scrub and stone. Voices thrice demand: Babylon or Bethlehem?
Only a magician’s choice. Every road I’ve severed and cleaved to

our tattered hemlines leads to the same pigeon-toed path. Still, be
bold, my darling. We were never meant to be earthborn.

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Cam McGlynn is a writer and scientific researcher living outside of Frederick, Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in One Art, Molecule, Open Minds Quarterly and Cicada, among others. She likes made-up words, Erlenmeyer flasks, dog-eared notebooks and excel spreadsheets.