Danika Stegeman Poem
Panacea
We live with glass flowers instead of flowers
that wilt light. Dinosaurs once owned the scene.
I hardly need to mention them to catalog
their numbered bones. A clock flashes on.
I’ll tell you how it will work. Nothing
is more likely to lead to an H-bomb
than the specter. We live in the air death has—
a tightened belt. The individual is some thing
we share until it hurts. I’ll tell you
how it will work. I would leave with you.
The path of life is strewn with bones
and the question is stirring. Nothing recounted
could assure intent hangs a lantern
or hope finds a horse.
Danika Stegeman graduated from George Mason University’s Creative Writing MFA program in May 2009 and co-edits the journal Rooms Outlast Us. She currently lives and works as a librarian, text editor and researcher in Bethesda, MD. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Juked and Noö Journal.