An Alchemy in the Bones by William Reichard

An Alchemy in the Bones
by William Reichard

The first element is fire.
The second, seed.
The third, blood.
The fourth, danger.
The fifth, desire.

My bones have grown mouths,
have grown paths,
have grown rivers
of lead transformed,
and I am coursed through
with a better, killing blood,
and my bones are singing
their songs of lives lived in flames.

Teach me to wear fire.
Teach me to transmute
every stinging cell until
I am covered in flowers.

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Who doesn’t love a bit of alchemy in the bones? This teaching exhortation of the transmutation of something, of experience, of pain, into substance covered in flowers is a hymn to aliveness.

Reichard, An Alchemy in the Bones. William Reichard is a Minnesota poet whose work consistently engages the themes of bodily transformation, queer experience, and alchemy,