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Prehistory

Poetry by ​Sara Ryan
I wanted to be an archaeologist
until my mother told me my office

would be in the basement of a museum
and my lungs would fill with dust.

Still, I learned the names of dinosaurs
and identified the difference between

a shoulder blade and a pelvis in middle
school science. I dug into the fetal pig’s

cold belly while a boy pulled my hair.
I bleached the skull of a mouse that I found

in the woods. I remember when I found a dead
spider perched on its head like a crown. When

I promised my mother I wouldn’t dig up bones
for a living, I only meant in deserts and far away
​
forests. I only meant to not dig up what others
bothered burying. I only meant the bones

that didn't belong to me.
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Sara Ryan
​

Sara Ryan is a third-year poetry MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University and an associate poetry editor for Passages North. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming from Slice Magazine, Sonora Review, Third Coast, Fairy Tale Review, Yemassee, Prairie Schooner, Hunger Mountain, and others. Her chapbook, Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press.

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  • About
  • Submit
  • Past Issues
    • Issue 1
    • Issue 2
    • Issue 3
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 6
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 8
    • Issue 9
    • Issue 10
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 13
    • 2024 Blackout Special Issue
    • Issue 14