Aphelion Issue 301, Volume 28
December 2024 / January 2025
 
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Viewing the Cloud Plain

by Michael H. Brownstein


We awake to a place we do not understand
folds of skin starch empty of breath.
The nearby stream the only space it knows,
the river trapped in the channel it creates for itself.
and boulder puddles erode into muddy flesh.
Dragons seek nourishment in the clouds
and the vapor streams we toss around
feed the other animals hiding in the sky.
Everywhere a bounty of molecules
stretches hands across itself
and we who come to this place far from memory
breath in an air full of nourishment and satisfaction.


© 2018 Michael H. Brownstein

Michael H. Brownstein has nine poetry chapbooks including A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004) and The Possibility of Sky and Hell (White Knuckle Press, 2013).

Find more by Michael H. Brownstein in the Author Index.

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