The Mad Girl Dreams of Houses Left Behind
in Segovia, in Alsace Lorrain. Last night she dreamt her old Maine house was up for sale and she was determined to buy it. Just when she’s letting go of everything that mattered, jewels she has no one to give to, no place to wear. Wind moves under the door. She remembers that morning standing under a dripping sign as fog eddied around her feet waiting for the bus, unsure how she ended up with this man she imagined going off somewhere far, feeling she should feel guilty about that as if it was the only life she...
Read MoreWanting Not an Abstract Horse
but a flesh horse, his dark mane pressed to my forehead. Before the moon’s full, I want his solid body, a book of blood and breath. I need his ears to flatten against my ears. No, I wasn’t horse wild as a girl, didn’t die for statues and books though I painted a black stallion against a hot orange sky. It’s this horse I dream I sleep with, one that couldn’t, like a dog, take care of himself without me, this beauty already filling the space where I dream him, wait for him to become...
Read MoreIn That Winter Meadow
clapboard sinks into its colorlessness. Pale drift- wood’s banked by leaves. The year fades with the frost. The last maples camouflage where there were deer tracks, leaves eddy around the new apple. Acorns carpet pewter stones. One patch of scarlet hangs on, blazes like a fire into darkness.
Read MoreThe Mad Girl Remembers Leaving the Old Year Behind in Madrid
flamencos past the catacombs, gypsies past the monastery of cloistered monks. How little she supposed years past those days her hair hung past her wrists she’d ache for nights when it struck midnight and everyone who mattered to her would be a moat around her aloneness, wildly swallowing green grapes as the clock banged at each bell and cheers and sparkling white wine filled the ink blue air. Those dozen grapes gulped in the square, fast, faster to insure a good year to come. How she’d look for the smallest green grapes, giggling and swallowing for luck and love and then the...
Read MoreLate November
one minute, the sun was out, it was fall. Geraniums under a quilt last night, a blotch of red opening. On the front step what looked like lint has small pink claws and feet. Next the sky was the color of lead. Geraniums under a quilt last night like a child you’ve tucked in or a body wrapped in the earth under leaves. In the swirl of sudden snow, what was left of the headless fur blows west Like a child you’ve tucked in whatever was living, a just born squirrel I suppose, hardly a living thing ...
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