Poetry
pith
i imagined you
as a wolf:
all fangs and gore.
all teeth and no ballast.
wearing breathless
hare as necklace.
licking lips clean as creek.
i imagined you as feeble
paws patting dirt in search
of viscera: picking pieces
from the forest floor.
rinse sanguine and install anew.
with daydream premonition, still.
with no compass: the dribble of divine.
and the crux
of migration: reversion.
i imagined you as once
holy and bitter,
dotting cruor on the shadows of leaves:
hand against wall
skeletal
the snow is already here, and
i am buried in
burning avalanche
lungs that heave and press
walls to ice-clad and fortress
in some sinking warm home:
future-tense and forgotten
steps up the half-stairs to see
your tongue on floor, elbows raw
with want and meaningfullessness.
on a clear night, i eat the glimmer
of your hair, i collect your cells
in bags and sniff sulfur
shoulder blades
with edges freshly aligned.
at dinnertime, i gulp down a river
and the current leaves me
bare
Spun
Feathers don't rest on an open wing—they spread, taught under weight, stiffly contracted. You could make my hair stand on end. You could ruffle me rightly.
Winter snaps necks, runs red the digits that hang from open palm. You could fill my vessels. You could make my arteries clap shut, spasm and rust.
And I? am a rag-doll. I am a paper plate, spit in circles by the twisting wind. I am a dog at your doorstep, tongue split and whispering sweet sins. He who begs to be let in.
If you came to me raw—hurried and bare—would I know, and would the relief find me? Will my bones forever rattle? caught in the grasp of child without grace. A rosy face pressed—and gulping in that retinal world, as it passes through glass, sharp and whirring.
She flails purposefully at the image, all glycogen and will. She cuts the air with ambition and in neat slices it falls into row. Delight is that smile. Cheeks upturned with ignorant bliss.
I take myself out in light. I press cool skin on silica. I drink in your bright, chewing mindfully on each photon. How the image is flipped. How it slips and melts like gum on my cortex.
If you came to me ready—calm and clear—I would know, and the grief would find me. My lips forever quiver there, caught in the space between touch, warm breath knitting spider-webs between us. Eyes: open and mouth: wide.