EMILY CORWIN

Fever Dreams

1

Barefoot in a snow bank, I circled

below your bedroom window sill,

hunger-filled, mouth frothing, the desperate

lather of a half-starved pack of wolves.

2

In a past life, we had been rabbits

—cottontails with long spoon ears

and the best sex life—we recognized

each other in a coffee shop. Old reflex,

I guess, we made love right then and there,

breeding with such wild insistence,

so many baby rabbits—they piled up

over the cup sleeves and espresso machines.

Our messy family dispersed when they pulled

the rifles out. They shot us dead

and skinned us, déjà vu.

3

Bareback riding in a blue wood,

my legs crooked around a big might dog.

He flung me swift from his spine

into a field of black-eyed susans

batting their lashes, a hangnail

from your finger nicking the sky. 

4

We fell from the house like two bricks,

toppled heavy to a white beach—pale grass,

shells cracked straight down the middle

like fortune cookies, we ran out of luck

at the shoreline—a big tidal wave casting its blue spell

everywhere, the deer went racing up the cliff-sides.

We stayed, our bare feet digging into the clay,

you bent your face towards mine,

said “You were my first body.”

Emily Corwin is a recent graduate of the College of Wooster, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Film Studies. She has previously been published in The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, Lipstick Party Magazine, Neat Literary Magazine, Insert Lit Mag Here, Bluestem Magazine and Scholastic’s The Best Teen Writing of 2009. Recently, she was recognized with the Academy of American Poets Betty Jane Abrahams Prize, and during her senior year of college, she was recognized with the Grace Prize in Poetry from the English Department Writing Prizes. Currently, she is working as a graduate assistant in Miami University’s English Department, teaching first year composition and literature.