Dion O’Reilly
Membership
It’s weird to be a member of an invasive species,
accumulating sky miles and slurping Starbucks.
Weird to be within my skin, yet part
of a horde, colony, swarm in search
of sugar, creating commerce as it goes.
My activewear unspools its filaments,
fills the mouths of salmon, remains
in their guts like undigested worms.
I dream of generations pouring out
of my womb—shining insects,
their hungry mandibles eating
from a trough filled with strange corn.
Now, the night is bereft of music
I’ve almost forgotten—
hosts of frogs belching love,
slip of salamander
into the cold grip of stream.
The color of the sky today
like something scraped from
the walls of a collapsed hive—
golden elixir acquired
with the last coin sewn into my coat.
Poems by Dion O’Reilly have appeared or will appear in New Ohio Review, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Bellingham Review, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, and other journals and anthologies. O’Reilly has spent much of her life on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She has worked as a waitress, barista, baker, theater manager, graphic designer, and public school teacher.
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