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The Science of Peregrination

CAS for Database

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Dana Blatte

Sharon, Massachusetts

Sharon High School

Poetry

          We open

                     our hands into birds, set

          needle fires just to coax

                                  their truths. Think. Little

                      dangers: the way we peel

back wings and deposit lumps

           of lavender. Here—

                                 we flush our flames into eggs

                       -hells. Think, little

horrors: our bodies smiling

                       in a grave. Swallowing

            the embers of a prickled lie. We close

                          our hands and extinguish

every flower—sadistic, sophisticated, lacking any term. We churn

            out token truths just to feel

                                                              weightless,

                                   weary,

                 smoking in our eggshells, budding

                                every fist. Wallowing

skies and sinews and all those skinny limbs. Our bodies, little

           dangers in the making; horror

                                        after horror in a labyrinth gone flight-

risk. We are liminal—each reality

              has no compass—finding, flying, faultline. This one not

                              kindling, nor lacking

                                any truth. Weightless, weary, there is

                                           no sallow rest:

                               we posit

our graves, plot the feathers, felling

               every ash. Portrayal as a truth:

sorrow is still sorrow without open-

                                            ing. Here—think smoky bruises and my hands:

                      the littlest of dangers.


EDITORIAL PRAISE

In the words of one of the editors who read this piece: “This isn’t language for the sake of language; it is language that happens to be beautiful while discussing imagination in a way I haven’t seen before”. It’s true; the author expertly weaves motifs of fire, flowers, and birds throughout a wavering structure and clever line breaks. “The Science of Peregrination” thus culminates into something simultaneously elegant and disturbing.

Dana Blatte is a high school student from Massachusetts. Her work is published in Fractured Lit, The Shore, Peach Magazine, and more. She is a 2021 student in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship, the Iowa Young Writers' Workshop, and Alpha, The Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Workshop for Young Writers. Besides writing, she loves linguistics, bedroom pop, and honey almond butter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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