by Jennifer van Alstyne

I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears.¹

this slow-motion room where stale air is filtered through tubes

& travels through them, through clear plastic, before

being pumped into a ¼” slit, a transition from mechanical

to organic –keeps you. This is your personal cacoon,

your cotton woven blanket cacoon, cold like time.

skin wrinkles & bloats in this state, yellows too, but this

is just the transformation, your final metamorphosis.

1.  From “Trouble,” All-American Poem, Matthew Dickman 2009.
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This poem appeared in COG in 2016