How difficult it is to say what’s here,
in April’s drownings.

Try.       The bayou, drenched in blinded eyes,
twice opened, once fighting with steam

of murk rising beneath scum and mosquito eggs,
decay warring with the soil-soaked water regimented

with weekly fertilization, grown with cannibalization
so it’s twenty aspects of the same hue, green gator,

alligator crawl moss, the moss even blooms, brown;
something multifaceted though, like the rotting tree

you dropped your foot into last October. Blood
soaked through your khaki pants, flies fought

to be near you, gnats arranged an orgy, manifested
in iron and dirt. They’d never seen red before.

Caitlin Creson is a first year MFA candidate at Georgia State University and received her B.A. in English from Augusta University. She has been published by or is forthcoming in Sand Hills Literary Magazine and Waccamaw, and she has presented poetry and theory all over the United States. Her work focuses on the depiction of processes; she likes to explore the image or story of something or someone becoming, turning, evaporating, and what all that entails. You can find her on Instagram @readingcaitlin. You cannot find her on Twitter because she is not a bird so she doesn’t tweet.