Dampening
Kathryn Reese
The neurologist on the radio says that with dynamic
imaging and a 0.2mm probe he can map which of my neurons
fire when I think of Kondolilla forest—when I
imagine my foot-fall on her leaf-bed, when I caress her
candlebark, when I kneel down to kiss—he says
with his probe and a 3D sketch he can reduce my distress
on seeing blue fisherman’s twine—bowerbird,
I—biologically compelled, must wind it from the dirt
before the storm, the flood-wash, before stream, river, seagull-
leg, pelican-beak, turtle-belly plastic death.
Can you still smell the rain? he asks, now that my tremor
has gone—can I hold my breath long enough to feel
that butterfly-wing fibrillation: her
eyelash on my cheek?
Kathryn Reese is a poet and an occasional writer of flash fiction. She lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Her work can be found in the “anti-lit mag” JAKE, the UK speculative zine Voidspace and eco-poetic destinations such as Paperbark and Kelp Journal. Her flash fiction The Principal and the Sea, was published by Glassworks and received a Best of the Net nomination.
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