~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Amy Pence

Metamorphosis

I run through Prague looking for a straightaway along the Vltava River, yet

Cobblestoned paths steer me to abrupt dead-ends: a riverside café where proprietors

Have set out their tables, a too-brief park where a few lone men bend to their trash-bag

Belongings. I am not them, yet I am a part. Crossing Chekhov Bridge, I wind past

Tagged freight cars—the name Megan snailed into creature—arrive at the Kafka Museum.

His coal dark eyes and oracle shadows incise me, pare me like a flute. What he wrote in

The Trial those final days precede the trains to Terezín. As if, and as a matter of course,

Words always precede our histories. What’s past courses the pulled shadows on water.

The just-perceived winds closer— granular, cellular. Among changelings, I run

At half-speed now: flesh to turbulent wings to the sound of wings on nothing.

Amy Pence authored two full-length poetry collections and the hybrid [It] Incandescent  (Ninebark Press)—as well as two chapbooks. Her most recent is Your Posthumous Dress from dancing girl press. Her newest collection will be published by Serving House Books in 2025 and her novel YELLOW will be published by Red Hen Press in 2026. She’s a freelance tutor in Atlanta and has taught poetry at Emory and in other workshop settings.