by Hannah Kroonblawd

the music room ceiling is first to catch fire   citrus wood and ivory splitting in two   if I cut my hands I can catch each yellow diamond falling from the hedgerow   my mother taught me to paint my face with linseed oil   to melt delicately so as to keep my skin from being scraped away   after the music room then the cinnamon tree   the olive grove   the wheat fields   my father told me that we mistook a star for the devil   that God looks less like an angel and more like a man   still when I lift the lantern I can see his carnelian wings   the grass-green glow of foxfire in the undergrowth   in the morning there is no place to go but into the river   two coins under my tongue as if I will return to a different home   to the portrait room that has yet to fade

Hannah Kroonblawd is a PhD candidate at Illinois State University, where she teaches in the English department and studies Anthropocene poetics. A graduate of the MFA program at Oregon State University, her poems can be found in Washington Square Review, Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Poetry Anthology, Puerto del Sol, and the Blue Earth Review, among others.