Miona Grae Short

Yesterday’s Taxidermy

after Joshua Bennett’s Taxonomy

My mouth opens: 5:00 am sits down and waits for tomorrow. The clouds are particularly buxom today. The cold is coming. The cold comes. My mother’s words from a dream. The cold melts. The Laplace equation is a special case of Poisson. No charge. The minute hand is divorced from the hour hand. And they are both running away. Beet juice. Carrot juice. Papa’s cancer. It’s windy. My coat is somewhere on the internet. Legendre polynomials. Boundary conditions. The inside of a Crystal Gem. The lake. The rapist around the corner. Beet juice. Carrot juice. The cleansing. The hiding of sweets. The long fast. The long fast. The anxiety of focus. The Bible. The best friend who sleeps close. Queen Sugar. Insecure. Atlanta. How to Get Away with. Mississippi. Papa’s cancer. The lie of being radically soft. Ferromagnetism. Paramagnetism. The Schroedinger equation says one thing about everything. The influency of my love language. The potential well. The imperfect math. The angular momentum of a breathless afternoon. The rain. The cold. The wind. The walk to the best friend that sleeps so close. The dead phone. The lie of being radically soft. The honey in my tea.

Miona Short is a Chicago native studying astrophysics and Spanish with a poetry emphasis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is usually somewhere thinking about Black holes or writing poetry or exploring plant-based cuisine.