Artifacts

posted Apr 3, 2012

Deer skeleton, blanched bones, ribs like broken

bed slats, one pointing leg still furred as a

woman’s arm in winter. Wildflowers

wind into a shopping cart’s plastic weave—

at the remaining wheels, orange paintbrush lurks

among red milkweed. Ballet flats without

ribbons wait. Guard rail twisted like cursive.

Up ahead, the granite mouth of the cliffs

slowly swallows the road’s tongue, and with it,

the line of vehicles waiting, ready

to disappear deep in the cliff’s belly,

to corrode, become the fossils of cars.

Shevaun Brannigan is an MFA candidate at Bennington College. She has had poems previously appear in Rattle, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Calyx, among other journals, and has poems forthcoming in Lumina, So to Speak, and Avatar Review.

Brannigan’s poem “Pennies a Day” also appears in this issue.