Reaching For Jupiter, by Len Kuntz

Black Haired Girl With Lifted Skirt, by Egon Schiele (Austria) 1911.

​Reaching for Jupiter

There are no answers 
inside this throat 
of muddled absence 
and dust mote air, 
nothing to refute antiquity 
or the scars of a 
slave girl gone deaf and mute.
But this time the 
shackles can’t hold you, 
the trapdoor can’t ensnare you.
Each sour cloud breaks apart
like shredded gossamer, 
the sins strapped to your ankles 
split free like the husks 
of your discarded history 
as you lean and reach upward 
toward the fermented sky 
where Jupiter’s moons
sway like a bejeweled gate, 
awaiting your arrival,
telling the watchmen to 
stand back, open the door
and let you in.

Len Kuntz

​Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State and the author of four books, most recently the story collection, THIS IS WHY I NEED YOU, out now from Ravenna Press.  You can find more of his writing at lenkuntz.blogspot.com