Greg Schmult
Lung feather, the tickle down
deep, subterranean flutter and flit
of swallows up the gusty shaft
seeking sunlight and chuttering out
like hoarsened morning chimes – why
she suspected
and how they discovered
a buried belligerence biding her time
malign nuggets of slow accretion.
My mother has me threaded with
an elegant strand of doubled helix, slimmer
than the finest fuse, winding down
to what might be an ill
at ease, warm cinders of her
smoldering estate.
My doctor’s slender fiber-optics glide
the length of my inheritance. Damage, but
as of yet, not yet.
Now, each time I clear my throat
feel the reflux flex like liquid bellows
that stutter is my body beating
with her wings to float, perhaps
a biding ember
the latent cough in need of air
to bloom like banked up memories.
***
Greg Schmult lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he works as an environmental consultant. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Hanging Loose, Iodine, Poetry Quarterly, Spillway, and The Main Street Rag.