Somewhere, the heart is a house quieted
with shadows, flat-bottom legs perch on
asphalt, sun-mitten stretch to the trestle
slate. Eyes render to sky render to birds
render to ocean, blindly dashing with low
and high tides, where back there, beyond,
kitchen floats and shower burns. Into its
window, pumping past ripplets is the rain
crying a river of fish for repast, where fins
peel a throatful of sand, mad with longing
to fill their bodies up with wild. Then field,
stomach soft and spilling mud, reroots dirt
of vein, of muscle, of blood, while the flesh
tastes the bone in the splash of Darjeeling.

***

A four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net, & Bettering American Poetry nominee, Lana Bella is an author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 470 journals, Acentos Review, Comstock Review, EVENT, Ilanot Review, Notre Dame Review, Rock & Sling, The Stillwater Review, Sundress Publications, & Whiskey Island, among others, and Aeolian Harp Anthology, Volume 3. Lana resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.