Aloja's Lullaby

Katey Funderburgh

My lungs fill with water. I fearwant the hand an unwashed stone shaken in the glass jar of my body.
My lungs let me fill with water. I lay my dress on the back of your chair. I lay on your unfeathered
blanket. Your front yard froze and keeps freezing. The oak trees shed ice leaves that silentshatter in
your hair, then shimmer in the burn of your cigarette before you give it to me. I take and do not want.
What happened to the water on Venus? Whitedying eye I track through your window. You peel the
curtains closed. Your hands, blindbeautiful treasure hunters. The skin below my navel bruises so
gently. I let your fingers swim within. Songbreath fills my glass. Sana, sana, colita de rana. I let you
climb inside me to sleep. I let my lungs fill with water. What happened to the water on Venus? I
fearwant myself as a drowning place. The stone becomes the egg. The egg becomes the bird of me. My
lungs boil down between my hips. The nesthome ruins. Come morning, curled inside your sleeping
fist: burn marks, the smallest piece of seaglass. The winterworld tracks my iceprints as I leave and leave
and leave.

Hailing from Colorado, Katey Funderburgh is a current MFA Poetry student at George Mason University. There, she is also a Poetry Alive! Fellow, and she serves as a reader for both phoebe and So To Speak literary journals. Katey's work is primarily concerned with nature, the body, and memory. Some of her previous poems appear in samfiftyfour and Jet Fuel Review, among others. When she isn't writing, Katey is baking or laying in the sun with her cat, Thistle.