Katherine Westbrook is a literary artist, currently in her senior year at the Mississippi School of the Arts. She enjoys writings works of poetry, fiction, and prose. She will attend the University of Iowa in the fall, pursuing a degree in English & Creative Writing and History.
Puberty
Figure.
An apology I don’t know how to give yet.
A ladle in the lung cavity, and the
sitting and the silent. The birth of stomach hair, dandelions
plucked before the wishes are blown. Afraid of my own
teeth and pulling. Little dipper
scratching at the jaw.
Fracture.
Mothering the milk-knees,
honeysuckle thrift in the spring,
rain-mouth, hot-head, skin-vased,
lilac in sleeping thighs, fear in the tibias, in the
cavities, small wrists like peach pits, roses licked in
mud. Fertilize, retract, ripping
the horizon from the
cradle. Hercules keeps returning home to
snake-bitten babies.