Confirming Your Various Assumptions

by Shanna Compton

Shanna Compton

Of course the animals are stone.
Of course the men are stone.
Yes the homes are stone & their doors are stone also.

Yet the animals are not stone.
Yet the women are not stone.

The smallest unit of stone is the grain of sand.
No help.

Yes the cities are thunder.
Yes the streets among them thunder.
The fields beyond them raucous with the thunder of stars
pillaging the unheeded botanical sea.

Rumbling isn’t always in the distance.
A grain of salt. A single hair.
A fleck of ice.
No help.

We have outlived the thunder.
Outpaced the streets
& somehow hushed even the stars.
Quiet, dumb stones.
Quiet, dumb doors.
Crack, stone men.

Flick. Flick.
No help.





Last updated February 19, 2023