Joanie Mackowski

Song

 

I built a constellation from my bones,

strung it up like laundry,

and evening hauled it over the tar-black pines.

 

And now my constellation veers, a swarm of stars

useless for navigation;

with no Polaris to guide you and your dozing

 

shipmates toward a new island of honey.

I concentrated my constellation,

wedged its wasp nest above the beam

 

of the moon and its backdrop swollen 

with gods and dogs: with hardly room

for a new pattern of going.

 

Others extend like mouths or snakes

about Orion's ankles. But my 

constellation fills the sky with its axe,

 

and each night it chops a dipper into fuel

to feed its own brute fire.

It will chop more, will level

 

that prickly forest of far.

When my constellation veers,

even the sun recoils from its luster.