Utility Markers

Striking the walls of the charred caverns

with a pickaxe, I excavated the concerns

of a middle-aged coal miner

with kids to feed before I blew out

nine candles. These recurring childhood dreams

arrived senselessly like spider bites

or swollen lymph nodes. High voltage lines.

Mistaking the accelerator for brakes ran in the family

and into the side of the house. An accident!,

an excess. We were pressed to be tidy

as spinning wheels, to spare circumference.

But I learned it was feral not to howl

the longer I survived. Sometimes I fled

this insistence on constriction

to bike past construction. But I was afraid

of buried gas lines releasing a fatal, skunky film.

Remember, you are a creature of joy. – E. with permission

Sure. Now in the visual field, nothing

is incongruous or venomous. It is all related

to the observation, the curiosity of agility

and movement. The overhang of the pick the overhang of the pick

the overhang of the pick

how graceful the arc and fix of any narrative as it’s told.

Even the house crumbling and peeling—

it flakes and tumbles like snow, flighty.

But. In those nightmares, the passages

were narrow, like my probability of seeing daylight.

I had been reckoning with my mortality

for thousands of years. An accident!

I, and schools of lampheads

like me, who like groups of sardines, we called

a family, had clung to making ourselves

useful, making ourselves useful.

Had valves and pipes inside us,

unflagged for collapse.

Danica Obradovic lives in Austin, TX, where she works as Fellowship Coordinator at the Harry Ransom Center, a museum and humanities research hub at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a creative writing MFA degree from the University of Houston-Victoria, with a concentration in poetry. Her book reviews have appeared in RHINO, and her poems can be found in several journals online. Her most recent creative pursuit is experimental film.