Animals: “After All Animals Left Being Terrestrial” by Sneha Subramanian Kanta

After All Animals Left Being Terrestrial
                                       for Jeet

the last to leave were redwings.
Forests turned into harpsichords.
Evergreens scattered lyric in the body

of water in low-tide. Frozen glaciers
mutated to become a violet farmyard.
The last vigilance of ghost hands

flailed towards an oblong cadence.
Animals fastened their pace
at the end of crepuscle to shift

into muscles of ivory-scope oceans.
Submerged continents looked
like faded foliage. Animals carried

irises-in-bloom between their teeth.
Cisterns became parched lands.
Animals tossed the burnt twigs.

About Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a writer from Canada. Her work has appeared in Waxwing Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, Hobart, The Normal School, Quiddity, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the inaugural Vijay Nambisan Fellowship 2019. She was the Charles Wallace Fellow writer-in-residence (2018-19) at The University of Stirling. She is the Founding Editor of Parentheses Journal and reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She is the author of the chapbook Ghost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press).