by Natalie Marino

 

A mess
of vagueness,

you are also
anything

you want to be,
a changeling.

You are a fortune
of fish,

a dying king,
an escaped

dove’s wing.
You hold

the moon
in your pocket

and camouflage
shy stars.

You are a young girl
with roses

murmuring
to the sky.

You grow
into a nimbus

and foreshadow
angry water,

making the rivers
quiver.

 

 

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Natalie Marino is a poet and physician. Her work appears in Atlas and Alice, Gigantic Sequins, Isele Magazine, Plainsongs, Pleiades, Rust + Moth, The Shore, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Under Memories of Stars, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (June 2023). Her Twitter handle is @NatalieGMarino and she is on Instagram @natalie_marino. She lives in California.