Alchemy
Chelsea Dingman 

The clover, cross-eyed in a field of witch
grass, grows bald in the wind

amid the shatter of small children
& I’m tired, again, of pretending

kind men exist somewhere. As a child,
men were suns at the glass, the fires

that result. Dear god, you must be a torch
among them, setting the fields aflame

inside my own heart. Last night,
the wolfish wind leapt. The trees shook.

The stars died a little quicker. A man
called me names I disavowed when I

accepted I was human. Oh humanity:
what is more overrated than the human

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heart? Confound me. I am speaking
for the clover. The grass. The green bosom

of field I long to love as the wind loves
the future woman I have yet to—

Chelsea Dingman is the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018); her first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). She has won The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Poetry Prize, Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, Water-stone Review’s Jane Kenyon Poetry Prize, and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association’s Creative Writing Award for Poetry. Her work is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Redivider, and The Southern Review, among others.

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Moss is a journal of writing from the Pacific Northwest. Published annually in print, Moss is dedicated to exploring the intersection of place and creative expression, while exposing the region’s outstanding writers to a broad audience of readers, critics, and publishers.

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