The Beauties of Dissolving

Since I took to you like a firstborn,
my words have grown:
apples from the branches of your bones.

I’ve learned the slow sounds
of your harvest: resinous comb,
too-good symmetry,

kingdom worth kneeling for.
You tear through me
to make room for your light,

stitch sleep beneath my lids
& sing to me from hymnals of rhyme.
You are my desperate hosanna,

spine a scaffolding for my grief.
Is there a name for this—  
something beyond straw baby,

beyond lion’s mane and meteor?
My insatiable myth, my Geppetto of gold,
let me undress your malaise—  

I want to bear it all for you:
the crowning, the suddenly being claimed—   
but you couldn’t exist

without your love of loss,
& so I will stop at quiet chasm,
at most favored of disciples,

will be a cloud of witness,
letting your darkest aches
dance in my lungs,

letting the quiet epiphany
of your hands
swallow me whole.


BY KARISSA MORTON 

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Karissa Morton hails from Des Moines, Iowa, & is currently working under Larissa Szporluk as an MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University, where she also teaches courses in creative writing & freshman composition & works on the staffs of Mid-American Review & Revolution House. She spends most of her rare free time watching NCAA sports & searching for Frank, her perpetually missing pet spider.