Lindsay Costello

My mother points to Orion’s belt

In bare feet she circled the neighborhood, just wasting gas,
Gasped at the same constellations.
The air swamp-heavy, oozing gelatin,
Seeping warmth edged in wet,

A blue funerary shroud draped over the sky.
Concrete fringed with shadow.
Vining and tangling,
I was all caught in it.

Moon phases explained her man’s mood or a cat scratching.
She knew cycles, the death of a star,
Compatibility.
Luck or good fortune.

I think the stars are little slits in a jar lid,
Not selves, but non-selves.
Gashes of untamed sun,
Like wind through a crack under the door.

At the edge of the neighborhood, a construction zone of
Right angles and spikes turned stone.
The forest died, and a mythic horde of animals crept
Into the braided light.

Lindsay Costello is a multimedia artist, poet, and art writer from Portland, Oregon. She received her B.F.A. in Textiles from the Oregon College of Art and Craft in 2017. She has published two poetry chapbooks, So What if I’m Unfolding? in 2017 and Bloomswelling in 2018, and her critical writing can be read at 60 Inch Center and Art Practical. She works in arts administration for a museum, volunteers as a Visual Arts Editor for Inklette Magazine and as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Digging Press, and is the founder of soft surface, a digital poetry journal, residency, and bookshop.