i hung things with pegs on a line inside the house / linen / then skins / then bodies / my face spirals red and hot like a stove element because / my real self transpires with my ego /

*

i heard a dog barking like men in the army do / the way my mom and my husband used to /                                                                                                         it sounded like a ghost /

*

a wax doll / a woman with scored skin like a candle / was stuck in his beard like a web / he is meticulously trimmed / she burns in his straw like a sacrificial offering / 

*

he didn’t understand that i didn’t want to be part of anyone else / i just didn’t want to be part of him /

*

if i sleep more than eight or nine hours i start getting hot and roll around like a rotisserie 

chicken /

*

ant legs / shifting in the dunes of deserts / ants / arimasps who rolled gold 

from the ground of india / to unstick the hem of the dawn / ants are resourceful / enough to roll up the sun from the grains / here / human legs are bought by the pound / legs in the sand / skewers devoid of meats and capsicum / and onion / barbecue tongs unable to grip sand / writhing and writing messages on the shore / twisting / rotating / attempting to walk on feet / on soles / i’m turning meat in a hot frying pan / some cuts of meat are more expensive than gold / i’m cold even in the warm colors of the sand /  

*

he inched toward me / you know what i want / i felt lustful / 

so i stepped back into the icebox /

*

antarctica is a desert / frozen and white / not like weddings or daisies / in a celtic legend / spirits grow the field with daisies when a child dies / the day’s eye / disc and ray floret / 

it is one and it is two / and a morning wedding ring /

*

preceding the ceremony / a layered wedding cake i refuse to walk around my house with / i 

have noticed that i love summer more in the winter than when i’m swimming in it / i leave the cake near the front door / the layers collapse / i still need to peel carrots and darn socks / the host of the ceremony covers the layers with tissue paper 

and inserts them in fine paper bags, for they are a special gift for me / the floor of the cake 

is a subterranean roof /

*

the girl got scared of her bear shadow / she could smell cum on his skin / she thought he was a man but even my most filigree spell wasn’t enough to save her from breathing in the well / i sat on the step but it crumbled beneath me / i was on concrete words again /

*

i remember my childhood room / my neighbor / i could see her through the window / she always kept the blinds down except on rare occasions when she got up at five in the morning to prepare to go to work / there was a girl in her / the girl moved like scenes in a movie / she dyed her hair again / peroxide blonde / she was almost unrecognizable / and our fathers were the same / the window is my mirror / he pulled down my eyelids because he could see 

that she was about to hang / in her mother / while she was stacking last night’s unclean 

dishes / 

*

the father was crying for her / he called her a harvest or a gathering / listening to this call 

was the most difficult bird to swallow / then i was the father and i had my charge next to me / 

the boy / i wondered if he would ever become a man / should i call for a siren or a healer / 

or should i leave the boy unhang from my strings /

*

i don’t understand why i can’t climb onto a step or over a wooden table / mothers are tables because they grow from the earth / the island of madeira was a forest and that is the material i’m made of / materia / mater / with pitchers of milk / we are not a tabula rasa / there are shadows who walk around with me / i don’t know how to persist if the window keeps shifting / it slips and slides like a snake / canopy feeding of the black heron / i have lived long enough to know we all lull the fish to our beaks /

*

the wagon feeds the barn with wheat / i open a door for a crosswind / beat wheat against 

the granary board / the grains are payment for my debts / for being a woman in my house / i wear perforated veils for awns can stick in my eye / chaff is carried away because it’s futile / wind winnowing / chaff and mot / mote in her eye / a beam in mine /

*

wool scarves are more warming around necks than ropes / the neck / in medias res / 

because the admixture is more profound than the heart or the head / an old man approached me when i was feeding my child / i fed her cottage cheese and eden’s apple / he was proud of me and gave her a silver spoon /

*

in the snow / one horse open sleigh or a convertible car / in the ’60s thunderbirds 

looked like rockets / riding in a roofless car or a bus / is traversing the world and through 

all its people / the collective unconscious is open to the sky / it was christmastime / 

for the first time i received handwritten letters in my mailbox / bells on bobtails ring / to avoid tangling the rope / i tie rope and guide the horse / to reign over my drive or spirit / sometimes reins / bobtails cannot swish or swat /

*

i carve more than one world above my children’s beds and hang them from the sky like birdhouses / it’s how i bless them / giving them a home to return to when they’re afraid 

in their dreams / birdcages enclose those who cannot carry their wings / they constantly need people because they don’t realize they require their own integration / birdcages / i’m under the ground / night roots poke through / their fingernails shine like a million guiding stars / crib mobile and a revolution /

*

i’m driving the grey pigeons up / a dawn like rising bread / the way the bodies of children grow / fire blackening the early trees / curdled clouds / sour milk is all i have left / seemingly static holocaust / fresh bread loaves instead of clouds / manna / my daughter said when i surrounded her with my arms / she felt as warm as oven bread / skeleton television aerials / charred / how the underneath is blue / forging of the sea /

*

coniunctio / augmentum plumbi / the expression of agency and surrender to survive 

the great birth /                                                                          poetry is my recovery /

*

when i wake in the morning dark / i walk down the stairs and when on the floor i feel 

for another step /

*

i was in silver water or it was above me / a tree inside which i was inside / its crown 

made of childhood summer leaves and branches / the higher part of me that could feel / transpired and reached out to breathe / the crying out of my helicon / coiled silver spring / 

the binding and pulling out of crocodiles from the ground /

*

i lie down under a thatched roof / the spring is here and the grass is still green / i’m polymorphous / i fly away / an oreb eating from the sins of the deluge / then to save elijah / rwti and the golden sun / and aker /

*

when i hang upside down on my child’s playground / the world is new /

*

the other day my husband of twenty years surrounded me in his arms / i sighed as usual /

why do you always push me away / because i don’t want anyone to touch me / i have too much in my head / he didn’t get angry / i was surprised he said / i’m scared you don’t love me / i’m scared i’m going to lose you / i continued the conversation like i was acting in a play or a movie / sometimes i see things you don’t and it scares me / 

*

he leaned in close / how do you know you’ll ever love me / 

*

i don’t / extrapolation /                                                                                                       faith /