Having opened to their fullest, they opened further
– Carl Phillips, Distortion

Too early, we grow teeth.

Too early, we are not content,
not knowing the longer
we remain one way – steeping –
the more brilliant we become.

And so harvest comes early.

We cannot help that the resin
running through us is so hot
and so sweet it overwhelms,
changing us.

We cannot help the one day
we desire to open another’s flesh –
to know it better – and our own.

Here in a world of blood
(not so far below some hazed,
veined sky we do not remember
the sun), we wish to breathe fire.

Too early, though we do not know it
yet by name, we wish for alchemy:

water to blood
.             blood to gold
.                           gold to flesh
.                                       flesh to wings

.             wings to wind.

–Bianca Spriggs,
How Swallowtails Become Dragons
Accents Publishing

More from How Swallowtails Become Dragons and Bianca Spriggs:

• “Practice Round”
• “After Loving a Pretty Man”
• An Interview with Bianca Spriggs (Part 1) (Part 2)
• Writing Challenge: “Below the Surface”
• Bianca Spriggs on Accents Radio (8/16/13)

Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow Bianca Spriggs is a freelance instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. She holds degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Wisconsin. She is a Kentucky Humanities Council Lecturer and the creator and programmer of the Wild Women of Poetry Slam (formerly the Gypsy Poetry Slam) featured annually at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Heralded as “the new standard bearer for the Affrilachian Poets” by founding member Frank X Walker, Bianca is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications) and her work may also be found in the anthologies New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings and America! What’s My Name? and the journals Union Station Magazine, Appalachian Heritage Magazine, and others.