By the crystal river named,

“The Jack O’Lanterns Hold Seances at Night,”

a raccoon is nursing her babies,

savage and cute,

piles of gray and black fuzz.

The river does not nourish,

stretches to the bay,

shatters.

Tradition is the province of men,

my womanhood ruminating in the sticky yard

always conjuring something new.

Each day remembers its ancestors,

is fermented and furrowed by them.

But my hands are a seraphim’s gadgets,

my breasts turrets in a house that isn’t mine alone.

A man repeats and repeats,

A warning siren to the beasts of shore and sea.

We will build as we have built,

but will not fight as we have fought.

You are strawberry scented.

I sip your hair,

strawberry soda fizz.

I love you,

but the sugar is killing me

so slowly I enjoy it.

Succulent,

my blood is drawing every mosquito

in an infinity radius.

Great likeness.

The countenance of the red drinkers

so unapologetic.

Performance

of ghost children,

A ballet carefully crafted.

I am unborn, untethered, everywhere the ether is not.

Invisible, I watch.

A ghost watches me,

green glassy-eyed, playful.

They are also frivolously naked,

but it is a very serious matter.

Dance dance dance!

Without me, my sublime body moves.

A singular science describes me,

and in describing me captures me,

and in capturing me decimates me.

These legs sex length,

These eyes arms as desperate as cricket croaks,

These eyes aquariums where the wish fish swims.

To contain me is to kill me.

Like a twisted phoenix I rise.

From my ashes,

a rose.

I am

so jagged,

a roof

peak with

shingles half

torn off,

splinters everywhere.

Catastrophic and

paranoid,

The crickets

chirp asynchronously.

Inside the window

The fly sings a song of

blue buzzing death in the sun.