The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2020

Like Foreign Gods Kimberly Ann Priest Wash your fingers of oil in skin, straighten and thrust to blemish the inside of her shell— the calcite of which shatters, the animal within already rotted. Say this is your sympathy allowing a chamber, arrowing the inside of her cup then show her the shell— how it is polished on the outside but this is not enough, how each laceration uncovers its luster. Say Do not flinch so expressively—the cut is not for killing, but for keeping, while setting wire fingers on the table next to a cold scoop of slime. Share the dial of a microscope. Examine the animal together. * Together, the moment will be carved into ten thousand groans, an assembly of converts tossing their hair to the rhythm of chiseled stone— The Meadow 189