When the Butterflies Died

I trace           my footsteps
         in the dust          of a butterfly’s torn wings,

         we were knocked           from the sky
                     by the teeth       of hungry bullets           fired

from guns of men           with severed heads;
                they wanted to hear                a butterfly scream,

they wanted God           to fall              from heaven,
                land in a field                of twisting bodies;

                dreams with hemorrhaging tongues,        books
                               with no ink,     butterfly in flames,

                wings shredded, confetti           covering a corpse,
footsteps             disappeared,     a home             forgotten,

skin of Earth Maker blistered,                 hands that boil,
                road to center          sheathed in cinder,

lost in a brail                of burning dusts,              bleeding map
                woven from disembodied       nerve endings,

                and a butterfly,             howling             in agony, convulsing
a final aria           as I trace my footsteps in her dust

                and worlds conceived of ash burn,       return to ash
                               again, and the men        with severed heads

                shove embers into their throats,           desperate
to reclaim           a smoldering kingdom.

Author of the article

Anthony Ceballos received his BFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2014 he won Hamline’s George Henry Bridgeman Poetry Award. In 2016 he was selected to be a Loft Literary Center Mentor Series mentee. His poetry has been previously featured in Yellow Medicine Review. He lives, breathes and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He can be found working at Birchbark Books and Native Arts.