Boneless noses and mouths on the white screen

By Ryan Di Francesco

Boneless noses and mouths on the white screen
cup the warm milk made by birds.

Their stemless shadows stand in a doorway
& eat me with their fingertips.

I crack their eggs and the sky comes out.

---

Fingernails do nothing but count to 5

& grasp at a hot plate

By Ryan Di Francesco

I once stuck my head through a window
& saw those small ants roll
out the sun into Niagara.
 
A rock collapsed
into an image.

One day
it will not exist.

---

Sleeping

By Ryan Di Francesco

My eyes are full
of pine needles.

The windows
crumble.

My heart sags.

I hear you
close to the bed
four hundred
miles away.

The stars
are a hatchet.

The moon
remains firm— 

like a silver ax
in the glass forest.

---

The Dawn Plummet

By Ryan Di Francesco

A pattern of dots
against the crisscross pane

circles the white poplars
of the Canadian shield.

Tacked
on a white museum wall.

I take it down
and watch

the rooster
absorb moonbeams
through its throat.

---

​Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a neurodivergent Canadian poet, writer, educator, and Editor-in-Chief of Shadow & Sax Press. His journalism has appeared in The Toronto Star, and his poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in PRISM international, Poetry Pause (League of Canadian Poets), Luna Luna Magazine, Acta Victoriana, ExPat Press, Pinhole Poetry, Pacific Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of several chapbooks, and his collection Along Tongues Full of Time is forthcoming from Ethel Press.