lithomancy
- lithomancy
lithomancy
you gather all the rocks from the rivers across the earth& pile them together: poppy-dusted, hungry, laced with moss.
the smoothest one will murmur the world's next step.who you are to decide, the girl with a dandelion mouth?
you can name dinosaur bones with precision, but who taught youto divine the truth of the exterior? the chalky coasts? pathetic.
you climb the mountain gorge ripping your nails from their beds& seek out the cruelest stone—a boulder pulled from a muddy river
that shouldn't have stones at all. the rock center is warm on your palm.you leave behind a bloody handprint & hope for a downpour. [End Page 55]
Hannah V Warren is a doctoral student at the University of Georgia where she studies poetry and speculative narratives. Her chapbook [re] construction of the necromancer won Sundress Publications' 2019 chapbook contest, and her works have haunted or will soon appear in Mid-American Review, Passages North, and Fairy Tale Review.
