We thatch ourselves off from the day with salvage, the color orange, pieces of twine, spread into a floor, a ceiling. Your feathers on my tongue, we glide on updraft, on thermal. Flutter in a rounded space. Pluck what glints. Fold it into home.

*Originally published in Stone Highway Review (edited by poets Mary Stone and Katie Longofono, though the magazine is now sadly defunct).

Ben Cartwright’s The Meanest Things Pick Clean was a finalist in the Floating Bridge Press chapbook competition and was published in 2017.  His work has appeared in The Pinch, DIAGRAM, West Branch,Seneca Review, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, After Our Departure, was chosen by Nance Van Winckel as the winner of the Powder Horn Prize and was published by Sage Hill Press in 2016. Ben toured the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2017 with the writers Leyna Krow, Tim Greenup, and Ellen Welcker as part of the Sinkhole Book Tour. He lives in Spokane, where he teaches at Spokane Falls Community College. He can be found online at benjamindcartwright.com.

Photo by Giga Khurtsilava.