Before the Air
Before:
The air
is pregnant
with possibility of motion.
The sky
dreams.
After:
The air
has exhausted
its exacting form.
The sky
can’t think.
What came before the air?
What’s left for the sky?
Not for Magic
The desert sprites are dying all
at once. They had a chance
in hell. The elves
get tossed head over heels
like coins turning fiery
on the dime that fell
out of the sky’s flammable pocket.
The air’s too hot
to dance, but the flames do
what they do. What they do
compares to lightning if the whole
expanse were struck
bright and dumb all
over, all at once. But once
isn’t enough.
Not for the singe in the air.
Not for the metallic taste,
the spark of brazen imagination.
Anna Leahy’s book Constituents of Matter won the Wick Poetry Prize and also deals with intersections of history, science, and autobiography. Her poems and essays appear in The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Pinch, Gravel, and more. She teaches in the MFA and BFA programs at Chapman University, where she edits the journal TAB and curates the Tabula Poetica reading series. She also co-writes Lofty Ambitions blog at http://loftyambitions.wordpress.com.