Micki Blenkush, “Painted Cave”

Painted Cave

All week I’ve been crawling
the dirt floor of memory,
trying to read flinty shapes

like calligraphy
in flickered light.
Inside-out, I move

through where I lived
before I knew of maps.
All that I think I know

can be traced to pattern.
I was primitive then,
working pigment to skin.

No one sketches
the beasts
they already know.

 

---

Micki Blenkush lives in St. Cloud, MN, and works as a social worker. She is a 2015 recipient of an Emerging Artist Grant awarded by the Central MN Arts Board, funded by the McKnight Foundation. Her writing has recently appeared in: *82 Review, Naugatuck River Review, Gyroscope Review, and elsewhere.

---