Dom Fonce πŸ”ˆ

For Caterpillars

I am invisible, shirt stuffed and undulating with tiny disasters. The blisters are forming – because I am young, I must touch everything. A man smokes a cigarette across the field. When I see him, I place the bristly body of a caterpillar between my fingers. I remember coiling with myself in the autumn piles, bark-flavored, the perish seeping into my jeans. I let them freely roam my skin, make home on my collar – I will suffer tomorrow, but for today I am happy being a nest. If one falls from the horde, it falls into the future. My sister is in the house, alone like me, only dartingly. She sticks her teeth in the windowsill’s wood, eyes jumping across the backyard, better reading than a book – mouth agape, hungering for a world she has yet to discover.

Author Reading

About the Author

Dom Fonce is the former founding editor-in-chief of Volney Road Review. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Here, We Bury the Hearts and Dancing in the Cobwebs. He is an MFA candidate at the NEOMFA (Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts). His poetry has been published in Gordon Square Review, Rappahannock Review, Delmarva Review, Jenny Magazine, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere. He lives and writes in Youngstown, Ohio.