Emily Rosko

Round and round they go with a ribbon and garlanded flowers in hand. The bark won't unravel, the tree spells solidness—we grand, oaken, elmed selves of the ancients. Our pith is clean. There's no pining away for tomorrow, we are in current respiration, we move with the wind. Singular, we are stunning. In horde, we are dense, differing dream. The autumnal flashiness these days is drought-determined. We barely go beyond the red. Our hollows are never vacant. We live to board; we take the ax. Marbled inside the original stem. We were born we don't know when.

We were thinking of starting a band, all lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery. This one would be gem, that one metamorphic, the rest pebbles and some laboratory-grown, semi-precious stones. The trees were in it for the long-run; they swayed or stood stoic, sheltered what they could. We made the cast as an idle grouping: we played the trump, the idiot, the glue. We backdropped with hearts hardly beating, our eyes set straight in our heads: the bombed- out school kids, the oilfields scrubbed in turns. We chewed the fat amongst ourselves. You said, this place should be more festive: a lightning bolt, a snail, a fraud. I set a crumb aside for the local roof rat; you tallied the droppings, the amputees, the gold. I blew my top when you lost "Dominion." You said, what can be done? It's gone, it's gone. Wind started in through the rift-way, buzzed over our slate-blue bones. All the leaves have aged with kindness, all our pretend looped and windowed raggedness went largely unseen. We were on stage the whole performance, held our breath for the final moments with cheeks rent and red. No neck was slit on our backs; no distraught lover jumped from our cliff's edge. There was a stirring backstage we could sense it: a temptress, some anger, some sin. Weeds came thick around us. The act had been bungled sorely. We withheld our opinions, sat in wait. We were good for a throwing.

There was no room for us to have feelings. Under the Queen, we were foiled, our faces blanked of wonder. A pitiful ordeal, our cheap toil. We hated her for stealing. Our crooked backs ached; our knees bled from kneeling, the whole sum of our treasures given up to fund her. There was no room for us to have feelings, so we made our way quietly; we arranged our own dealings, checked what we clocked. Each swallowed their thunder and railed within. Nothing left out for stealing. But pound for pound, we grew skinny, weary, reeling from the new rules she devised. We had to watch and mind her. There was no room for us to have feelings. We were audited, then fined. We abided her schooling. Then, all music stopped. All solitude filled, we couldn't ponder our losses. We tried to forget how much she was stealing. Our patron saints left us; the stars took to jeering, leering at our lessened state. We hardened at our blunder. There was no room to have any feelings. What of us? Not a pittance. No worth there for stealing.