fable: [ The males are jealous of the young, & will bite off their testicles ]
Through the windows of a passenger Train, we served hot black coffee To the villagers running the tracks–
The burns were glorious–
& complete. The nervous System, dammed–
By the splinter of a self that lodges in the skin Of a dream. & yet, they smiled
With their yellow teeth, Snouty as wolves, as wild ass– I believe Heaven an unlit matchtip– Phosphorus dome. All the roads Of the year
Slid into ditches, mud–
& arose a flotsam– Of thigh bruise, Hip kiss, our cloven love.
Beside you, I slept best– With my eyes open.
7 The Paris-American
Emilia Phillips received her BA at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University where she was the Levis Fellow for the coordination of the Levis reading prize. She is an associate literary editor of Blackbird and a recipient of a fellowship from Vermont Studio Center. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from AGNI, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cerise Press, The Collagist, Colorado Review, Ecotone,Green Mountains Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, Sycamore Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere. Her recently completed manuscript is titled Signaletics after a late 19th-century system of anthropometrical criminal identification, and the chapbook manuscript in which these poems appear is Bestiary of Gall.
