By Kelly Lenox
Snake coils in warm sand turning with Earth
and circling the Sun cradled in an arm
of a galaxy spiraling like the woman
who dives off a bridge. Her bungee unfurls
as wind catches her jacket, canyon holds her spin.
This digital century forgets counterclockwise,
relearns widdershins. Ignores the ancient
opposite: that it’s deasil—godly—to follow
the Sun, the clock. Sinister to turn against it.
From that Southern hemisphere canyon,
the woman returns north and fall cycles
back to spring. To name what direction
the Milky Way spins is to pick
a side to stand on. The snake
stretches and is gone.
Kelly Lenox (she, her, hers) is a writer and translator with work in Gargoyle, EcoTheo Review, SWWIM, Cirque, Hubbub, Split Rock Review and elsewhere in the U.S., U.K., Ireland and Slovenia. Her debut collection, The Brightest Rock (2017), received honorable mention in the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Book Award. Her second manuscript, No Other Ground, is looking for a good home. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Kelly holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is editor-in-chief of the National Institutes of Health Environmental Factor.