Kathryn de Lancellotti
Find Me
A voiceless flower/speaks/to the obedient/ in-listening ear
—Onitsura
Find me on my back
watching sky
through castor leaves in spring–
in Shadow Canyon
the atmospheric rivers, bomb
cyclones have left–
the tiger swallowtail appeared.
Find me in the swimming hole,
ice cold. Watch my nipples
erect, watch me dip
my face in holy waters
watch a woman’s head go under.
Find me soaking sunlight
in my mouth, watch me watch
my lover aroused.
Watch the peacock, the cows, elk
in the middle of the road.
Find me naked
in the canyon, find it clearing
out the old, watch the live oak
fall on the Tacoma–
feel my heartbeat,
hold me river,
guide me. Find me
in the orchard eating
Golden Delicious,
watch me
birth in groundwater
spread open.
Watch a face appear
as I scream.
Find me righteous pain, piercing
joy, my daughter at my tit.
The storms are over
California’s no longer in drought.
Find me in the garden
eating radish, praising dirt.
Find me voiceless in the river,
lupine my listening ear.
Kathryn de Lancellotti’s chapbook Impossible Thirst was published June 2020 by Moon Tide Press. She’s a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and a former recipient of the George Hitchcock Memorial Poetry Prize. Her poems and other works have appeared in Thrush, Rust + Moth, The Night Heron Barks, The American Journal of Poetry, Quarterly West, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University and resides on the Central Coast, California, with her family.