Michalle Gould
Dirge for a Dinosaur by Its Bones
into the form of the world
that surrounds it; replicating
itself physically, in the image
of the objects found nearest it.
We are haunted not by a ghost,
but its corporeal incarnation,
as a wound sometimes reminds us
by its shape of the very instrument
of its creation. As, yesterday,
during installation at the museum,
our shadow grew upon the wall,
until we seemed for a moment to be
(re-assembled at last after such long separation)
joined there once more to that same flesh
which failed to prevent our extinction.
that surrounds it; replicating
itself physically, in the image
of the objects found nearest it.
We are haunted not by a ghost,
but its corporeal incarnation,
as a wound sometimes reminds us
by its shape of the very instrument
of its creation. As, yesterday,
during installation at the museum,
our shadow grew upon the wall,
until we seemed for a moment to be
(re-assembled at last after such long separation)
joined there once more to that same flesh
which failed to prevent our extinction.
Michalle Gould’s poems have been published in Slate, New England Review, Poetry, The Texas Observer, and other journals. She lives in Austin, Texas, where she teaches and tutors writing and is working on a novel set in England in the 1930s.