Diane LeBlanc

Self-Portrait as a Nine-Line Poem 

Yesterday, I peeled the ripe sky and ate the eclipse. 

Drank the red off a blackbird’s wing.

Sent my spine out for another bag of clementines.

I wrote cereal meaning carceral, and readers said nothing. 

Days of borrowed rodent bones.

Nights of linen and glue.

My line break wants a tattoo. 

I’m here to conjure crocus and slug.

Here to fill the cold kettle.