Jonathan Travelstead

Cloud Fable

This could be a memorial 
for how the trademarked, porcelain body 
lies in repose. How light floods the surgical table 
& the tangible from the foundry room.  

Lacking definition shadow gives, 
the eye sockets, lit smooth, contain sky,
space. You've been sanitized, 
dressed in a suit with its own atmosphere, 

so don't dissect this. A scalpel couldn't find 
a seam in the bare brow of geometry, 
this sexless torso. Not so much 
as a hum exists here, in such a vacuum. 

No sign of the quantum coin sunk 
in the mercury of their quicksilver chest. 

_____

We've waited out history for this,
standing for days in a queue of bodies
to kiss they/them. 

_____

They've unlocked the doors. 
One-by-one, our lips brush the porcelain cheek
which glows carmine, russet, rose, 
as we leave our bodies.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter. Since finishing his MFA in Poetry at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he spends much of his time turning his lathe and apprenticing for a jewelry-smith. His first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt Press was released in March 2015, and Conflict Tours (Cobalt Press) was released in 2017.