Three Poems from Inheritance

Robin, under the burning bush

icy morning fog

rising from your skull

neck

twisted

vacant ribcage

a    valley    growing    moss

an absence of sunlight

makes me want to melt into my petunias and let their pollen fill my vision their velvety petals bend to such a delightful flowerbed           a living grave for a half-dead poet            my bones will make such good anchors for roots and in being so, i’ve nothing to worry about here but the bees                                                        landing on the remnants of my      tongue 

i inherit what lies in the garden:

a smattering of pillbug freckles
poison ivy scaling across my chest
the oaken creak of my spine
migraine burning at my brow
hair, upturned roots of tiger lilies
womb, the clay soil where nothing grows―            . my mother plunges a spade           to dig another grave

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Darcy Dillon is a Creative Writing student at Columbia College Chicago preparing to graduate. They simultaneously work as a freelance artist, writer, and real estate office administrator, so they always have their hands full of work and their head full of the next project they want to complete. In the future, they plan to begin a non-profit to help fund creative people in the south Chicago suburbs to get their degrees and follow their artistic visions. Their work as been featured in Hair Trigger and they have been an editor for the Columbia poetry review’s 32nd and 33rd issues.