Cat Gut by Holly Day

across the room from me, my guitar

pulses bright colors, throbs dreams

I can’t ignore. I think about sleep

but the music’s too loud.

my guitar sprouts lilies

not intended to twine, purrs

of birds I’ll never see

but it knows all about them.

even idle, I can feel

the razor-slide of metal strings

cutting grooves into worn calluses

changing my fingerprints just enough that

future scholars will recognize the damage.

my guitar blooms like a lotus

floating on a blue sea I can’t climb out of

pulses waves of songs near-realized even

when silent, invades my dreams to remind me

that I am not in control of this.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).