These poems are from a series inspired by reading Atlas Obscura stories while listening to a music genre randomly selected from my list. The poems were written immediately after reading, still while listening to the randomly chosen music.

Mississippi Petrified Forest
(“Last Christmas” by Wham, “O Holy Night”)

I thought we would cut down a Christmas tree
but instead we started a rock collection. It was
the wrong time of year. By which I mean
I had not yet fast forwarded to however
many years it would take for you to turn to stone.
Not cold. Not unfeeling. Just that you would
stop shifting, like when you figure out
how to sleep so that the light doesn’t hit you
a little differently every morning.
I still collect rocks. I have shelves of them
and they are so pretty that nobody
ever jokes about what’s trapped in them.
I know what used to be inside.
I know the point of crystalline, and now
I know how to keep out what’s malleable,
ductile, volatile, what will go up like a dying tree
lit up with stupid stars.