We walked

Downhill in nighttime

To find it

Seething outside

Like old brides

With virtues intact

We knew the worn-down hillside

As well as

Our saint’s names

All the same

We fell there

Fold us in sprigged chaparral

The tugging of

Legs against ( Read more... )

for miles it goes

the color of wheat

a hawk hanging stilly

a white horse flat on its side

snug in fashionable jeans

we see stars without constellations

i dream i’m ten.

nude in nightgowns

i crawl out the window.

straddle then inch

the rough tree limbs.

i grope the old carnies.

you dream of birds there-

fell dead from ( Read more... )

Tonight she stumbles on train tracks. Wears high heels to nubs. Gloves and wool sloshed milky and blue curacao. She’s flung her cross pendant in darkness, made knotty her classy bouffant. Her voice is just noise from a throat.

She remembers the kneeling to want things. The books of girl’s prayers and cloaks of the angels and saints. A party and ( Read more... )

Dusky in gardens-and curious-we trade prayers for apostles. It is just for the body of it all. We part robes to examine the panels of them. Press slats to our ears and we listen. Tap them to hear if the heart taps us back. We stroke the taut veil of the throat. Unlatch the mouths and the pearl-onion eyes. Weigh genitals of paradise in cups of ( Read more... )

Every kiss reminds you of baby hands. The sprain of being born. At birth, the world overwhelms: too-new. And all those well-meaning mothers with their plates of white cake. They touch your arm-don’t wait too long. A drawer brims with organdy bonnets. A filled-up trousseau. A moment as pure as in wedlock. The rules speed up at twenty-five. You ( Read more... )

She has port wine stains on her breasts-purple Africas tucked into the split of her blouse. Her mug is the nicotine shade of a bruise half-healed. With so many freckles closing in on her eyes, they call her unfortunate. And all those tattered plaits of flaxen straw. She always says it in the worst possible way like tig old bitties or cancer of the ( Read more... )

Bunkered in a sleepy village, she had something very zsa zsa gabor, worn with a smudge of black mascara and the darkest, most introverted floral strewn handbags. She went over big with the boys from the first. Smart, she smelled stupidity in the nice men. Attraction, she said, was simple. It was all a matter of the mind’s control ( Read more... )

Ridge Vista

kids knot through the rooms-squealing-and doughy avozinha shouts mal creada! in her half-way language, like she knows the true god from true god and light from light. i stand in the corners. i want to ask what is begotten not made. our house is a church-house and the ladies in the hen-house and the men in the whole house. men drink tv ( Read more... )

Kindred

we haven’t been beautiful since then / toothsome in the thrums of our youth / sun dappled through rain / all bright stranger-faces were wide and wider / my voice wound round us in thick-thick clucks / digits dragged along upholstery, each car-hair distinct / a voice flung from the stereo: listen, listen down that sound: you yes you / i ( Read more... )

i brim with prim things, all porcelain. i am a belt cinching a slim waist slimmer. i fit the pared me in a handbag and clutch it close. i am heels on linoleum, tapping / tapping. i am slight as a splinter of light. i teem cashmere / canopies / lite things. i’ve got dish shards mixed in with the eggshells. i am weak with kitten bones. i’ ( Read more... )