a poem by lily brown

The Natural World


He drew dirty
flowers, then clayey
flowers. Then mint

against gray. Trees
look like legs
beneath low clouds.

Blooms implode
up close, mucked
with color.

Handles for the landscape:
sea scraped
of water, sketch with

hidden humans.
All the skeletons
here look

alike—their walking
stick bones, their
achromatized
privacy.



"The Natural World" originally appeared in Cannibal



Lily Brown's first book, Rust or Go Missing, is available from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. She currently lives in Athens, where she is a PhD student at the University of Georgia. She edits the online journal, RealPoetik, with Claire Becker.