Wherewith thou shalt do signs The sage steppe yields up flickering the moment that it ashes skyward, limbs smelted from a quail house into blinking infrared, into data; translations of the cindered land spit forth the zeros and ones for GPS; wardens give their go- ahead for a scramble to the drop. Best practice digs perimeters protracted from above in grunt work ‘round the augur’s templum, neon clad accounted for with every pickaxe swing. Corralled by amber ganglia, the hills the earth just grid to gash, grown hotter since the bush burned holy. There, where speech is sacrilege and air pollutes the lungs, aphasia one more grace descended tongue to flaming tongue.
Tristan Cooley lives in Vermont and works on a fruit tree farm.
Amethyst Review 