Annelid Segment
Worms carry the weight
a potato sack harbors.
Dark starch, russet orbs
growing under dirt.
As hills call their insides up
worms enter a mouth,
relish mum tongue.
Our limbs can’t reconcile
missing themselves.
Slit below clitellum
worms regenerate tails.
Consumed tubers
touch and wonder,
jejunum to duodenum.
Gathering back the body
we sift subterranean.
Matthew Schmidt’s poems have been published in Pleiades, The Seattle Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and elsewhere. He is an associate poetry editor at Fairy Tale Review and the Co-Founding Editor of the Iowa-based literary editing and educational nonprofit 1-Week Critique.