Ella’s Nocturne
Little spark of insomnia
caught inside Ella—like a red bird
stunned to find itself in a kitchen
after flying through an open window,
wanting the cool air of a new forest
but finding instead a strange panic
for the brightness outside.
In her bedsheets Ella gleams,
rolled up inside her comforter
like a fork in a fancy restaurant.
The night stands up, a tall
dinner guest, his green hair
billowing, teeth sparkling
in his dark mouth.
Every crawling creature on the block
points its shining eyes at Ella. She is
a bug-child, a once-flying thing, stuck
in an old web a spider forgot,
the stickiness not unpleasant. Slowly
she melts on the tongue of the moon,
a kid, a lozenge, wild and purple.
Jeffrey Bean is a Professor of English/Creative Writing at Central Michigan University. He is the author of two chapbooks and the poetry collections Diminished Fifth and Woman Putting on Pearls, winner of the 2016 Red Mountain Prize for Poetry. His poems appear or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Crab Creek Review, Willow Springs, The Laurel Review, and The Missouri Review, among other journals, and online at Poets.org and Verse Daily. www.jeffreybeanpoet.com
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