MICRO

you smelled like an animal

By NOOR IBN NAJAM  |  22 SEP 2020

on fire at the wedding, poor goat.
there was nothing to be done for that hair
nor tights itching your coarse fur.
they tried to teach you, the catalog
of grace is fingers​

lead arms. ​nothing for your little hooves
they killed you
fur-first. you beast
the unruly library​

of beauty; Alexandria
meaning, defensive.
you unmighty hips
you runaway flames. you feet clop-clopping on the ground

noor is a poet who teases, challenges, breaks, and creates language. she's a Callaloo and Watering Hole fellow and a recent resident of the Vermont Studio Center. her poems have been published and anthologized with DIAGRAM, ANMLY, The Academy of American Poets, the Rumpus, Bettering American Poetry, and others. her chapbook, PRAISE TO LESSER GODS OF LOVE, was published by Glass Poetry Press in 2019.

RELATED ARTICLES

BACK OF THE ENVELOPE

What Animals Are Admitted To Paradise

By INES PUJOS

Mountain goats have climbed their way hoof and tail apart to the tallest
peaks and leaped with lockets of an old man’s beard. They say the
goats that make the leap and survive, the ones that make it

across to land on the other cliff, get their shadows get turned into clouds.