Laura Lush

In the Puszcza
Laura Lush
From: Hometown. Vehicule Press (Signal Editions), 1991.



In the secret forest mushrooms glow
in velvet stupors. Under moss,
skulls whiten like well-kept streetlamps,
empty conchs were you to hold them to your ears.
Yet the deer, the lynx, and boar live on freely,
nudging at still-uncovered helmets.
The night's shiny as a cut.
And sometimes they find them, face down—
skeletons with the dainty bracelets
of barbed wire round their angel-thin bones.