Eric Baus

The Worm’s First Film

Two horses climb a hive. The plumage around their waists retracts. “I ate mace,” one thinks. “No one knows I ate mace.” His mouth repeats a top lip twice. Don’t tell my brother. Please.

A still shows his core is a molting eel. It eeks some light then glows back in its hole. It grows glass from its face. It sleets.

“No blinking,” he says to himself, through his peel. He blinds his own ivory with the finest lamps. Does he seed a dot of blood? Do his teeth feed leaves? Clouds polish him plush. This is the last fence, dust.

Obscured Elk

An inch of willow. Two days in sod. A reddened clover blotted with flakes. Burnt back to plastic, the radar beacons black. Torn asps and urn ants snow their insides to clumps. Felt drawn from obscured elk floods the pond until it sinks. The tarps evaporate. A flare emerges late to say, Hey lake, you lost your tree.

Isis’s Sister

She remembered her story. She was a sister looking down. She was etched in ash. She was so. She thought her mane would be sunned and it was. She was Iris, on the banks, in curls.

Port Fever

An asp saw me floating. Keep swimming, it hissed. My lips were cropped by the silt in the stream. Iris called it “Cloud,” fjording her gowns.