Or the Other Dream

where my mother
cut into my shoulder
with a knife and pulled out
a sack of fisheggs
or eyes or they could have been
from a frog I’m not sure
and then she pulled another from
the space between my ribs,
held the sacks to light
and we watched their insides
twitch in jelly, their shining bodies
glint like coins in the zip-locks full of water
she hangs outside the barn
to keep the flies away.
 
 
 

 
Michael Hurley is from Pittsburgh. His work has appeared in the Sycamore Review, Weave Magazine, The Fourth River, Fourteen Hills, and is forthcoming in the Spoon River Poetry Review.  He is the winner of the 2012 Keystone Chapbook Prize, and his chapbook, Wooden Boys, is available from Seven Kitchens Press. He is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.