Backlit

Red scratches an ear waiting for the next howl.
Let’s invoke the moon as a backdrop,
remember a robot’s working on its far side.

Heat cracks just a flinch a knuckle
then nothing interrupts
silver air
except rolling hills,
wind patterns like an assortment of plants,
a comb of alternating ridges and space;

{

want to say womb, as if one could nest
in a shell of wind

}

Shira Dentz

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK, 2020), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Plume, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, New American Writing, Black Warrior Review, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Apartment, Poets.org, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards, Painted Bride Quarterly's Poetry Prize, and Electronic Poetry Review's Discovery Award. She currently lives and works in upstate NY.