Medicine

by Emily McIlroy

I climb into the ear
of the island–auricle of ash
rising above blue lung.

Lay my bones of water
over black tuff, pin my lean heart
on a kiawe thorn.

Fever folds over stones,
salted and bleached by swell,
Cancerian sun.

A moon jelly–

sheer bell of my skin
stretched over crab-crush,
disfigured by sand.

I light the stub of my spirit
on an hour of sleep and wait–

for the tide to speak.

There is a stirring of pili grass,
the call of a sky thief,

the wheezing of spit
sucked out through the reef.

Remember how. 

I make a helix
with what’s left of my spine.

Remember how what? 

A moment of cloud-shadow,
a spray of froth.

The days,
how they spun like dolphins. 

The nights,
how they deepened
star by star. 

The bees,
how they took up inside the house,
built hives in every hollow–remember?
Honey came right through the walls.

The stains,
how they opened like oysters
in the palms of your hands.

Emily McIlroy was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in 2005 and her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) in 2011. She served many years as an instructor and art educator for the Honolulu Museum of Art School and the Hawai‘i State Art Museum, and currently teaches in the Drawing and Painting Program at UHM. When she’s not in her studio, Emily enjoys reading, writing, and walking and swimming her way through various terrestrial and aquatic wildernesses. She resides amidst unruly trees on the island of Oahu, and does her daily best to meet the needs of her very vocal Siamese cat, Gormaen.