Field Elm
you rose-breasted sapsucker in your distinctive crown & hockey stick what
is a field elm worth anyway? wood pulp & paper making underworlds this
melancholy ulmus minor, companion to warblers & red-bellied woodpeckers,
resistant to splitting at risk for twig blight likes an open field along a river &
interlocking grains, she’s low-maintenance but ornamentally appealling prone
to Dutch elm disease drought-tolerant & deciduous to the Northern hemisphere
The most interesting thing about me can’t be my
latitude
423-4 DEF
Dutch pastoral
blue skies &
yellow eyes
am I an HSP
or is it simply
a fallacy
sleeping sheep
& flying geese
parakeet creeked
a dragonfly
lead me
to your empty
shipping
containers
& misty
mosquito trees
I prayed petrified
to four glass orbs
on crabgrass
whistling
our path ways
are always
shelled
cuz this used to be
the sea
(& soon again
will be)
planes fly
ahead
in
slow
motion
now
can we make
the power lines
more pretty,
please
I hate electronic
music &
anything that’s an
obligation
but techno
really is no
time machine
like music’s
supposed to be
my perceptions
are just parallel
opinions
playing out so
please clarify
where your
edges
lie
Kelly Mullins is an American poet who lives in Amsterdam. She runs the weekly poetry newsletter, Poetry Trapper Keeper, with her friend Larissa Fantini. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Streetcake, SAND, Shock of the Femme, The Broadkill Review, Boston Accent Lit, Pine Hills Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Allegory Ridge Poetry Anthology, Hash Journal, Maudlin House and In Parentheses. You can find her hanging out on instagram @kellmullins