Rachel Franklin Wood is a trans poet from Laramie, Wyoming, but she hasn't lived there for a while. Recent poems and interviews with poets have appeared or are forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, the Fort Collins Courier, Anomaly, Susan / The Journal, Epigraph and others. She’s in Denver now, where she coedits pulpmouth.
INVERTEBRATE
I thought to wave my flag
for the big ones, stalking off alone,
footfall audible on skin, a thin skittering
of flat pebbles on dried lakebed,
but those small ants needed only
to be gnawed once in half
before taking to homecraft
and in my dirt the ideal medium
made a community sequestered.
This too large body refamiliared.