Little Spells: Poems by Maya Jewell Zeller

Little Spell with Chest X-ray

Little Spell for Diagnostics

What the doctor says / is an echo / when
you’re off in your mind field /full of light
that saw too the dinosaurs / when you’re
down in the deepest/ recesses of your ocean
/ skimming for blooming tubers / with your
head lamp / when you host a birthday for
the fossilized trilobites / when you invite in
skin cells that gather in the crevasse of deep
sea / what the doctor says /echoes off your
sonar detection / your blubber / no
protection from human worlds / what you
swallowed was impossible / what you
swallowed/ was only the beginning of your
body / possibly rotting like a processed
bagel/ on the beach the birds devouring you/
the birds your head a drum of seeds/
shattering into the everything / Someday
someone will see you & say oh, so many
glittering suns!! / didn’t you know they used
to be on fire / far away, long ago

Little Spell with Chest X-ray (2)

under the epidermis we are gelatinous
like an aloe vera but without healing;
the science of an x-ray makes that all
invisible on the screen the delta
of lung is erased as is the coffin of heart
if the whole universe were between my skin
and my lung all the beasts shelled
and scaled winged insects feathered
parents their beaks various degrees
of useful if all the plunging necklines
of volcanoes if all the celebrated wealth
of the unlogged forests if even the ocean
came up empty there you’d never see it
& never feel the pain of it & you’d be able
to go without reading the newspaper
clippings for the end of the world

Little Spell for Addressing Turtles

little spell with chest x-ray (3)