we hide in the belly of a beast who the rubble of Rome. Zaporizhzhia: a prayer cards you sent by the truckload. we’re bound not you though. you can keep your shades of gray & your bluebells, too. we’re not your holy you can’t pull the wool over your own eyes— we are not birds or bees busy in the craws. we can’t find so much as a chicken’s hand. we used your words for kindling at our we’ll put on a show with black feathers in we’re wearing thin, when our shins can’t shoulder grovels at our kneecaps chewing on rue while we wait for you, Russki, to come shaped like guns. you promised to construct us our skeletons to move in. we denied Panika M. C. Dillon is from Fairbanks, Alaska, and Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Poets&Artists, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, Steam Ticket, Alice Blue Review, apt, and others. She received her MFA in creative-writing poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and works as a legislative reporter at the Texas Capitol. Image: redbubble.com Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
would burn Troy & hollow out a home in
power station, a cage of swords paved in
for hell with gongs tied to our galoshes.
for your little crusade. keep your rubles
land or the sinners you save from early graves.
let alone the flies in someone else’s.
buttercups with bites of worm to warm our
wishbone in the clay, but it coughed up a
rat barbecue. we are not your crows, but
our hair for a square & steal a meal when
anymore water to boil, when gravel
& happenstance. we’ll dance the Tarantella
with your foil of heating oil, with your mouths
a castle stamped from our skins & invite
you that one joy—powerless though we are.
Heavy Feather Review 