POETRY
DIAL TONE
Icarus calls to say he wants his wings back.
You skin them into an offering, depositing them
on his stoop like a hunter bearing
its prey. You had no use for them anyway, those pretty man-made
flights. Icarus lets the gap close like a shut
eyelid, and you are all too keen on his lips. No,
that isn’t right.
Not
everything is
a story.
You thieve gravity and anything that can be consumed:
messages. Past lives. Backfire
singing make-believe on shoulder
blades. Icarus was always bird-boned, still
born in mid-flight.
In this story, he pops out a wound,
already waxed and feather-slick.
All the bodies you count
are his. So forgive yourself
if you cleave Icarus’s wings
and leave behind the polished bone. You fly
like this: calling out with smiles trailing teeth. And Icarus marries
you to gravity—no, that isn’t
right.
This
is not
a story is not
belonging?
Even offerings do not ask
to be returned.
Dana Blatte is a sixteen-year-old from Massachusetts. Her work is published or forthcoming in Fractured Lit, Rust + Moth, Gone Lawn, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and more, and has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation and the Pulitzer Center, among others. Find her hyping up her friends on Twitter @infflorescence.