Timothy Green has worked as editor of Rattle since 2004. He’s the author of a book, American Fractal (Red Hen Press, 2009) and host of the weekly Rattlecast and co-host of The Poetry Space_. He occasionally mints poems as NFTs. Find him on Twitter @timothygreen. 

***

Macro

somehow the ants
have found their way
inside the only
cherry on the tree

they swim inside
the sweetness
of an open wound
split by the beak

of the Steller's jay
I'd startled off
just yesterday

***

Museum of Natural History, 3 a.m.

The only sound is the coke machine’s 
condenser kicking on, rolling in waves 
from the south wing restroom hallway 
over the waxed floor of the unlit atrium 
under the hanging bones of the basilosaurus 
not rattling in the wind, this unsung harmony 
of pressurized air pulsing along the glass 
walls of the children’s play area 
and dino dig site, past the gift shop’s 
shot glasses, the purple plesiosaurs, 
the polished stones and fool’s gold 
half-buried in fake dirt and ready to find, 
but also spreading in every direction, 
rushing through the theropod’s splayed ribs, 
and into the grinning maw of the giant 
alligator, licking the leg of the brontosaurus, 
its bulging knee head-high to a human, 
and upwards, too, over the railing 
of the mezzanine and into the modern 
ecology display, reverberating through 
the fur of each stuffed specimen on exhibit, 
its carousel spotlights still cycling over 
the spotted ocelot, the Texas tortoise, 
the javelina, jackrabbit, green jay, 
ocelot, tortoise, rabbit, jay, until the invisible 
sensor in the belly of the beast 
senses what it needs and shuts off 
the machine, the coke is cool again, 
and there is no sound at all, not the tiny 
jackhammer of the air scribe’s tungsten 
needle resting on a workbench, 
not sodium bicarbonate sand-blasted
from a microabrasion tool, not even 
the whir of the dust collector’s dusty fan 
sucking the finest grains of ancient dolomite 
through the box hood’s yawning vents 
and into a large black garbage bag where, 
after all this time, layer by fragile layer, 
they have finally settled again. 

***

Three haiku 

all these years
your voice on the phone
still birdsong


over the endless months
of isolation
a weighted blanket


after divorce
the trees I planted
loaded with plums

***

Publishing credits

All poems: exclusive first publication by East Ridge Review