[fearnotes] | alison thumel

Alison Thumel is a Chicago-based writer. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, and Ninth Letter. Her first chapbook, LIFE OF, won Salt Hill’s Dead Lake Chapbook Contest in 2016.    

_____________________________________

[you are a near-death experience]
 
 
If you have a reason for your fear,
it doesn’t move

the pebble in your throat,
smooth
 
not like breath-rattle
like deep death
 
dropping
a ripple in the well.
 
You are breeding reflexes
& finches.

Your little potbelly
boils over. The room
of your heart
rimmed with skinny streamers
 
breezing when a window opens
like follicles
like smoke falling
 
from the floor above.