First Hydrogen Balloon Descends in a Field Outside Paris, August 1783

Dayna Patterson

 

sky leviathan

 

blob body

 

extraterrestre

 

medusa bell escaped from ocean prison

how?

 

hollow color

                        of afterbirth

                                                 ribbed skin

 

murderous moon

 

un monstre sinking         seeks 

 

our children                 our crops

 

we don’t need another king

            to crumb us

 

strike the church bell               donnez l’alarme

 

aux armes

citoyens,

 

grab your pitchforks scythes muskets powder horns

 

call out the hounds

 

slit bulbous belly, slash

skin-silk through

 

harpoon

its vacuous rubber stomach don’t

                                                                                                           

inhale its last                turpentine gasp

 

Il est mort, enfin

 

Let the beast rot in the sun

 

***

Dayna Patterson is the author of Titania in Yellow (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and If Mother Braids a Waterfall (Signature Books, 2020). Her creative work has appeared recently in AGNI, Passages North, and POETRY, among others. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Psaltery & Lyre and a co-editor of Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry.