Big Dipper Firefly

Aurora Shimshak

an atmosphere a valley

tie-dyed ballooning

at the edges a hatch

in hill palms disco descending

bergamot chorus frogs

backroad’s long exhale

chip and tar you let me be

animal whorl globed

in animal knowing

wanting to run I ran fully

through you untranslatable

code field lustgreen

I expanded into switchgrass

I pretended you were cameras

to capture me it’s true

what I said about vigilance

but also I was fifteen

alone with lightning bugs

after dark I practiced

no metaphors for smallness

Aurora Shimshak grew up in several rural communities and small cities in Wisconsin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2023, Copper Nickel, and Poetry Northwest, among others. She currently resides in her home state’s capital where she studies rhetoric and composition and appreciates badger statuary.