i.
the icelandic word
gluggaveður
loosely translates to
“window weather”
and how fitting
for that day
in early april
ii.
when a sinister shape
took my window, all
rook and malice,
primordial sound-terror
echolalia caw, caw, aw
and perched on the
plateau of my garage —
iii.
•scanning, scanning•
buttonblack were his eyes,
obsidian
and carrioncrazed!
the raven slid his talons
pianist-like across the shingles
The drive home is a rabies shot, agitated,
you twitch from state line to county line
to places in between,
the coordinates slipstream daydreams —
You remember the road numbers:
145th, 194th
impossibly lengthy, made of pulverized
bonemeal and crunch coat,
those steel-cut graveled byways
You remember the inhabitants
rendered from bacon fat and ham hock
tourniquets and night shift salt licks
Or those pubertied boys and their
percussion kits behind the old band shell,
blasting canonfire flams back there
on Thursday nights, before the
sweating, stinking performance
of pops classics, patriotica,
the flags swatting the air,
or was that the yellowed sheet
music, free from clothespin
bondage?
I dreamt in arpeggios the night of the blood moon. The world became an overfull glass of red wine under its infrared glare. Plants in my windows, muted to grey, alien tentacles tickling the panes in the inverted light, shivered, their roots tightening in suspense of the claret nightmare the blood moon bore.
A paragraph away, I found myself stretched to fit the countryside, pores sprouting newborn life, eyes, large as the craters of the clotted moon, pools of gelatin, ecosystems revolving around demonic nuclei. Ropes of eternity clasped around me like lover’s hands, burning bonds into my skin until there was no telling lariat from dermis.
My molten heart cried out in anguish, Please, let there be more! as tectonic plates slid together to applause the soliloquy. The earth seized, tides defied gravity, stretching up toward the heavens in a twisted braid. My pillow became damp, then the sheets, the liquid crimson, warm sex. Onward, onward into the hematic night, entire universes nestled into my teardrops.
Come morning, come night, the music of the dreamworld tinged with bittersweet recollection, I woke, scarred by the wound of time, by the blood moon unhung, inside me.
*
Photo credit: “Total Lunar Eclipse” by GSFC, licensed under CC by 2.0.
outside the world is screaming
for water. Life is bursting—flowers climactic, orgasm-
ic things, their petals dripping, gooey with plant blood.
the air is holding a cloth to my face
covered in atmosphere
it’s the end of all things,
the birth of all things.
my feet kick stones that are wetter than the grass,
slick with memory of forgotten riverbeds.
i have known the sorrow of these friends,
the gnawing behind the eyes that can’t be diagnosed.
i’m being torn in half like a split pine log
drowning sap, spineless lifeform.
high heat is labor incarnate.
the door opens and out I spill
afterbirth born from eyesockets torn,
rendered unconscious by warmth.
the end of all
the birth of all
picked apart by the vultures at dawn
the yardsale ladies size me up
with their price-guns and brooched breasts
the spine is a horrible thing to waste.
brave little toaster cries crumbs &
sidewalk lines like calendar kisses *&*
my brain is an intestine that can solve math problems.
end all
birth of
Image credit: https://flic.kr/p/TcpJMW (licensed under Public Domain)
1.
a crossword puzzle undoes itself
mirrors look back and
judge with the sharpness
of unpolished rock
she looks onward
and dries her hair
with the newspaper, expelling
facts onto the bleeding page
2.
a glass of tea
and its ice are oases
on the tongue
and a slow honeycomb drips
tufts of amber rum
while
she advances slowly, thrusting her
wigwam hips and pushing up her pin-
up breasts in the heat
an opera cascades from a window
3.
we roll exposed, leaving behind
silver blades, like knives
lifting our moans from the grass
littering and deflowering
the suburban air
4.
the summer monster advances
toward the bike-riding children
and tears the innocence from
their freckled limbs in delight
Rice Paper 