Shadows below, like those of animals.
And at the edges of the path, pricks of milkweed,
like flames of fur.
Beyond that, a single streetlight
onto the left side of her face, casting a faint gold.
Shadows
stretch to the horizon, rising: between them,
slivers of time turned to grass and faint snow.
When morning returns, the sun
will reach between the trees like a swell of honeyed sleet.
And as the landscape stirs within itself,
the land will wake, the plants not yet budded will go on
quietly slumbering—
and all the while through the night
the fields of cotton balanced like pearl trays
on the small
of the earth’s back will go barreling on towards
the end, the sun round above them
and helmeted with fire.
It is a prophet.
It is the first and last light.
Mazzy Sleep is a 13-year-old living in Iowa City. She has written two feature screenplays, four novels, and hundreds upon hundreds of poems and short stories. Her work has been published in Blackbird, The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), The Minnesota Review, Rattle, Barren Magazine, Literary Review of Canada, Geist, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Mazzy was commissioned by the Lunar Codex project to write a poem that landed on the moon in February 2024 and March 2025. Her poem “Heart Medicine” was named a Notable Poem in the Best Canadian Poetry 2024 anthology. mazzysleep.com
