In The Forest

by Elizabeth Evangeline

In the woods which you call the forest. Thick and dense like black German chocolate cake crawling with cherries and layers. Revolving in a self-contained time structure like the isolated disc of a sci-fi planet we’ll never have in detail though it moves covered underneath the limits of how finely the human hand can draw the human eye can see. How sensitive our instruments. In the ventricles of the land zoom in on you with grass streaks like camo or leaf-world Indians or postapocalyptic football players or three girls walking into a drugstore on Halloween got up like leaf-world Indians. In the wet lungs of the land you carry one bone bullet on a necklace in yr back pocket the iconic Y of yr slingshot. Hopping across branches and back through dark slush you whip yr torso along at once like a tongue. In a twinkling of shoes you are pooling campfire around seats of stone outcrop. Casting shadow hands against a light-flooded panel of trunks at full attention / full with intention you make the signs straightforwardly without airs for any sky-eye the eyes of the forest are enough gelatinous the larger clustered in the armpits under branches the smaller spread like caviar along the corrugated bark filling the spirits in like fence- or face-primer like a gossiping letter a tin flask like the first admiral speaking low and close by the ear of the captain. You start at 9pm because only privacy is needed to constitute the witching hour a celebratory warmth like yr lover on Christmas a calm so living and heavy as can barely sustain dread of the future “you’re so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter” laughing so hard yr sister resigns her other feelings to later and puts a straw in yr tropical drink now a parasol instead of an umbrella a heady cone of bright blue paradise water bloomed on a stem in yr hand all that pressure on one point but you acted so casual you said listen don’t worry about it you said there’s time enough for that later you said really tonight we’ll go down by the river I nicked three of her parliaments when she went out to check on the taxi she’ll never admit that she’s smoking cause Mom and cause it would be a Bad Example we’ll walk by the river and you can have two say yes I said I’d think about it