Speak to us in silk, they say speak to us in milk, be pillow–soft, be satin–smooth be home–spun sugar sweet. We part our lips. We breathe our breaths. We bite our tongues and swallow blood knot stones into our stomachs, heave and spit red salt where words should be, stitch shut our mouths with stubborn […]
“as old as old is able to be and be there still” Anne Sexton You say, I was so beautiful once but I never knew that ancient beauty only this body like a forest fire like a field of bones its boundaries impossible to distinguish from the bed sheet. You say, I wish they’d let […]
For Delia and Ellen You’ll know me by my walk between the market stalls, by my shambling gait and by my fur–gown of rust embroidered with nettle and seedpods of dandelion, buttoned in sweet clover from the riverbanks. I am a riddler in a pinecone crown, I speak honey, but don’t let the bees buzz […]
for Elise Matthesen Here to this island of flowers and bones, not many come but my song draws them like the riptide a drowning sailor or the noose a broken heart. The great ships founder, break their treasure at my feet— oxhides of copper, black–figured wine–bowls, amphorae smashed hollow as the chests of their crew. […]
A pirate queen and buxom buccaneer is Captain Tina Jens She plunders from the privileged and divies up the dividends She keeps a lair on every coast Cicilia to Syria Your maven for a haven far as Lemnos and Illyria She sails on sloops so swift they oft mistake her for a peregrine Her masthead […]
“010000010100100101001100010010010101011001000101” —The Robo Sutra They used to promise me They’d save my head in a jar Or at least my brain, Like Hitler, Which was a bit better Than being stitched together By arrogant barons Back in the days of botch and burke. But don’t think I haven’t noticed, Sliver by sliver, You’ve been slicing […]
only it was really too inconvenient, you see, not least when it shattered on the staircase I was running up to catch the last train in that station without an escalator, salarymen swaying in front of me to a silent tune and nothing else but the surly stare of the konbini shopkeep, craning his head […]
No one ever explains that bones rust, joints locking like a memory gone faulty and off–key. Instead, we thank our limitations, praising their sharp flint, ignoring the burning and the smoke— the alarms unheeded and commonplace. Sometimes, you don’t know the monster until you’ve seen it, and the worst villain is the one who has […]
If I am Hades, my char’iot splintered When I met you; my cold bones ignited With heat, bright, that in my chest had wintered Through storms of cities, my own heart blighted. Your fingers’ warmth, your sighs, I’d sew them here— Imprinting flesh and bone with golden thread, So they might linger beyond half the […]
A hundred maps line the walls, but scale representations of cities, mountains, rivers, roads, castles, museums, dramatic views never show the secret places, the precious depths and heights to which humans fly in dream. Careful pens draw the boundaries of the living, but the dead walk paths unseen, to places our waking hearts forget. If […]