Stefanie Kirby

Woman as Xeriscape

A body: sweet, scavenger teeth perish
in your flesh. Throat locked, your skin
sings flame. There is separation here,
a pattern of sun across your folded
face. Without food,
a body survives
for weeks. Without water, days.
You know the ground draws sweat
from the living to feed its aquifers.
Leverage against desiccation
or drought. Absence swells
from your center in tides.
A body
rebuilt in the slice and peel of need.
A piecemeal victory in clay soils
that won’t absorb water, will split
in enough sun. Division borne of self-
perpetuation.
A body shaped in this
earth fractures without effort.
Your body
a landscape emptied in thirst.

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Stefanie Kirby is a Pushcart nominated poet residing along Colorado’s front range. She studied poetry at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and has taught writing to middle and high school students. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Rust+Moth, Dialogist, Plumwood Mountain and elsewhere.