Transmutation~ By Madeleine Gallo

Lately I have not wanted to write a poem
or wake the dog up at one AM to urinate on the kitchen floor.

Yesterday I wanted to press my butterfly seashells 
onto blue canvas board, 
but I probably will not buy the canvas board,
so I stopped collecting the shells. 

I salute seashells because they are born of water -
the water I am leaving tomorrow. Vacation is over 
and the taste of September festers back inside my gums.

I wish I could fester here into the gums of the sea.

But I never knew how people could walk into that gray line 
of water that burns the esophagus.

Can you ever transmute sedimentary rock into butterfly wing? My life is somewhere, under water,
glued to a gray canvas board –



Author Bio:
Madeleine Gallo is currently a first year MA student at Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in Susquehanna Review: Apprentice Writer, Fermata, Sun and Sandstone, Belle Reve Literary Journal, The Pylon, Sigma Tau Delta Review, Into the Void, Litro, and Rattle. After graduation, she plans to pursue a PhD in Contemporary American Poetry.