What is the most venomous animal?

← v15n2, Fall 2016

When I dream the poison

it’s green, absinthe

in a crystal glass. Or safe

inside the moon-globe

of a box jellyfish,

looping a slow orbit

through the Pacific, looking

for me. Urchin-breath

and rattlesnake tongues, forked

like a memory:

pain holds you

to the earth. Grief

lets you go. I dip my leg

into saltwater, and when

the sting comes, I think

of stonefish, cone snails, lapis-

blue frogs. Antidote

is a failed sun, venom

its corona. We tried,

you’ll say, but there just

wasn’t time.

grief love animals body

Janet McNally

Janet McNally is author of the poetry collection Some Girls (White Pine Press, 2015) and the young adult novel Girls in the Moon (forthcoming from HarperTeen, 2016). Her work has appeared in Gettysburg Review , Boulevard , Ecotone , Crazyhorse , and elsewhere . She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and has twice been a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. McNally lives in Buffalo, New York, where she teaches creative writing at Canisius College. Photo by Jesse Mank