BJ Best
splinter

a sapling in your wrist,
ticking to your pulse,
your own arboretum
of pain. no, not pain—
just an alien skin,
a hoodlum tree
carbon-dated back
to when you snagged deadfalls
from the forest
and one bit you like a snake
with false teeth.

_ _

B.J. Best is the author of the collections But Our Princess Is in Another Castle (Rose Metal Press, 2013), Birds of Wisconsin (New Rivers Press, 2010), and State Sonnets (sunnyoutside, 2009). I got off the train at Ash Lake, a verse novella, is forthcoming from sunnyoutside in 2014. He lives in Wisconsin.

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