Amy Fetzer Larakers has had poems published in Near Southand blossombones, and her poem “It begins in anise/and ends in Asheville” was published in the 2008 Best of the Net Anthology. She has an MA in English from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a concentration in Latin American and Latino Studies. She currently lives in Wheaton, Illinois.

The Second Sun: a burial

I take your femur, clutch calcium to cheek.
remember your name.

the third day is like a week of crescent mornings
I pile marigolds, a bowl
of fire, 10 slices of blood, a grain
of sugar, and a small portion
of blue under a silhouette

the second day is a flood, the jade smell of teeth

your leg is not special,
a hollow bone dusted
with cinnabar. You resemble
a child in a circle
of wind, or water
painted indigo.

your sternum, my body. a cave