Eggs Within Eggs

by Will McClelland

Arizona State University

Will McClelland is an undergraduate at Arizona State University majoring in creative writing. He will graduate in December 2026. He is a bookseller at a local independent bookstore, which has become a common topic of his writing. The goal of his writing is to show there is something profound in every moment if we look deeply, even if that moment is as seemingly boring as working the register on a slow night. 

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Cry for the questing head  

of the creeping devil cactus  

who knows living means 

leaving himself behind.  

Cry for clocks, scarred hands who cry 

for peace.  

Cry for the snake 

coiled on the carpet  

on his first lonely night  

in Eden.  

Cry for the stag, headlights that cry 

like sunrise. 

Cry for the hatchling  

furiously swimming upstream  

as he’s swept from his birth waters.  

Cry for wrung-out Ouroboros, boys who cry 

for the love the world called a gag.  

Cry for the question marks 

that boys are taught to hammer flat 

and store in a quiver 

under their tongues.  

Cry for the Nightjar 

who wakes from overdose 

not knowing if it is time  

to sing or to sleep.  

Cry for the sundial 

who saw his son swept away  

by the thin dark wedge  

of his passing.  

Cry for his son, men who do not cry 

while they break the world  

that broke them.  

Cry with your son, let myself cry 

like a robin egg cracking 

on my flat palm: eggs within eggs 

within eggs—some boys 

spend generations breaking 

until they’re born to a palm  

brave enough to be gentle. 

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