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Entrail #10
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When the entrail hit the dirt,
shock outwitted pain,
and she lay in wait as stars moved,
marking the heartbeats of night.
It wasn't every day she could
pull force from under the ground,
raise gravity past her prickly skin
to catch absent breath, restart the circulation.
She thought she was marked for death,
fourteen, fifteen miles across the valley,
talons crushing her top and bottom,
nails piercing her skin like needle thorns.
Reverie broke in the dead of night,
owlsong wafting on stiff winds,
and she shivered at the edge of a black road,
praying for merciful morning.
When dawn broke she wept for joy and sorrow,
counted crows silent on the maple branches,
the distance to water and weed cover,
eagle circling overhead, sun not up half an hour.
Who will remember this entrail pulsing with desire,
dropped to her midnight destiny
by one eagle's body spasm,
his loss presumably her gain?
What can she think of the wheel of fortune and fate
cranking its timeless circles of life and love?
Does it crank for her on the rocky shoulder
of Route 44 and County 76?
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Writer
Bio
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Michele F. Cooper's work has appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry Now, Visions, nycpoetry.com, Poetry Motel, Poetrymagazine.com, Fiction International, American Writing, Nedge, California Quarterly, Faultline, Black Buzzard Review, Atom Mind, Sea Change, The Frontier, Arachne, World Order, Online Poetry and Story, The Jewish Spectator, and in a chapbook, Women on Women. She was the second-place winner in the 1999 Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition and won honorable mention in the 1999 Sacramento Poetry Competition. She is the author of two books, founding editor of The Newport Review and Crone’s Nest literary magazines, and of a chapbook series, Premier Poets.
MFCOOPER99@aol.com
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Other
Pedestal Published Works
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