poem

by Jade Kleiner

Alchemist

me, sick of medicine, brain eating mind:

alembic woods molding the hospital,

a cat with bare ribs slinks from the highway

and I follow, midnight roots stumbling me

towards the healing Alchemist:

wings mass, school of bats, full dark,

hands shiver, beast screams and owl whimpers,

to walk by night, to withdraw, to learn,

dead spiders, snotty moss, broken fox,

dead dawns, sunk pills, filled brain:

sulfur in the morning then food at night,

a puddle steals my face

with clotted moonlight:

“Good morning,” I say to the alchemist,

her bare pond lunarstricken,

free from cricketmoans,

in the forest bowel, the living end:

her feet unsunk in fine sand,

fish eyes rounded, fingers full of mercury,

pupils eating moonrays,

I fell into the present

as she thrust into my mouth.

returning, the puddle held the woods

and not my face.

---

Jade Kleiner is a trans writer and mental health worker from New England. Her poetry, haiku, and fiction can be found in Free the Verse, manywor(I)ds, Cold Moon Journal, Bright Flash Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is currently revising her post scarcity novella, Ship of Plenty. She has practiced in the Plum Village Tradition since 2020.