by Katie Berger
Monarchs
In a country where lightning bruises
trees so easily I can flinch or I can
remember. You can ask
if I’ve seen the skeleton
of a strip mall off 275–the new one–
and I answer with drawings
of skyscrapers that in kindergarten, painted
and ruined, I flipped on their side and instead
insisted were bullet trains. And the trauma
of the paper lanterns, too: stripped
from the restaurant of wontons
and ice cream and re-wired
into the massage place across the street.
Hands can return to the problem
spots on the thighs or back but do not speak
of rebirth.
I stopped searching for monarchs
when every sunset thoroughfared
dull in my memory. Say yes
to the orange and black paint. What you think
is a monarch is often the viceroy
butterfly—it won’t migrate
if it was never here.
Katie Berger holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and lives in Nebraska. She is the author of Time Travel: Theory and Practice, and Swans, both from Dancing Girl Press, as well as a number of poems, stories, and essays that have appeared or are forthcoming in Cherry Tree, Thimble, The Maynard, and others. She can be found at http://www.katie-berger.com
Emerge Literary Journal 