by Nicholas Yingling
Could I stop this? How could I
fold inhale into exhale and breathe air too
thin for fire or touch this earth
with only a shadow, feeling each root
wither in my jaw, each scale wild
as a frond, my heart growing and growing
faster until all that holds the chest together
is a wish, and not know
I’m trading one dimension for another?
How did it begin? As display? As a fall
so quiet and slow you could dress
the feather from the wing
and make of it a currency, a culture,
or some other magic.
Nicholas Yingling's work can be found in The Missouri Review, 32 Poems, Pleiades, Colorado Review, and others. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley and UC Davis and currently lives in the San Fernando Valley, where no one's sure why he would want to recover from an eating disorder.