Like Orion let his hounds loose. Asteroids
and drool raining from on high. Like a bite
wound where each mark grows a new tooth.
A wound that takes its time, wandering and whining
like a dog. Like a hare that waits until the last minute
to believe it isn’t hidden. It knows its heart could kill
and wants it to. Like a low hum in a long slick ear,
more trough than ear. More heaven than hare.
Like a wound that rises back out of the skin,
tough and sparkling like a geode. Larva cut
by a lapidary. I would have married this
wound. I couldn’t help but admire
something as strange. Like it was written
in the stars. Consuming while being consumed.
I was brought to the ground, a celestial hunt.
I was a wound, a hare, and a blowfly. I liked being chased,
mauled, reborn. Being all of it at once. Three
in one. The dogs I was and worshipped. My own god.
Alyssa Froehling received her MFA from Ohio State in 2021 and her poems appear in Black Warrior Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Find her at alyssummaritimum.com.