Gold River Neck Riddle
By Catie Rosemurgy
What is red and singing on the inside, gray and moaning on the outside?
(The opera house)
What is green, damp, and stuck between the forest’s teeth?
(The doctor)
What drags on the floor and catches fire?
What reveals the girl’s legs while destroying them?
(The afternoon sun)
What grows tall, blocks the sun, loses everything,
and still darkens the field? (The young man
looking for the idiot boy.)
What spreads out by simplifying further?
What (smoke) was here?
What (government)?
What saves and ruins?
(The museum)
What blooms amongst the rocks?
(A ship)
What opens wide and explains why?
(A burning window)
What is ill-advised in the new world?
(What ends at the treeline.
What split like a lip into two less viable possibilities.)
What shimmers on our bodies when we are warm?
(Our historic burning) What lines both the inside of our coats
and the inside of our mouths?
(Our current burning)
What is the real museum?
What is wet and is yet a wick?
(The tongue, which becomes colorless over time.
Which flakes.)
What is the souvenir we bring home from the flood?
(Our hair)
On what bent and drinking animal are we the pattern?
(The land)
(The river)
(The narrow) The trees
were some stony being’s fingers.
We walked easily between them to the wet edge of its face.