Dominated by a Day

Tomorrow lies in my bed
As rugged as a coast.
I marvel at the sleepiness of my fist.
Where has my fight gone?
Has it left me for another woman?
A woman with more steel in her back,
a chest of gravel?
Tomorrow hums,
Brawny and blue and wastefully.
I adore extravagance.
He wants to tell me what to do,
I luxuriate in commands.

I am no longer holding my dice.
They burn in the green fire writhing in the corner.
This is not my game.
This is not my life.
It is time to surrender.

Earth and Water

Obese clouds

in shades of sweat pant gray and

office tile white

promise rain to my dry, dry Earth.

The ants have been doing their rain dance for days,

twigs like tiny stilts the building blocks to their effigies.

I have been wrapping rainbows around my wrists,

sculpting the scavenging ground into beautiful lakes to

attract the clouds,

tell them there is room enough on this gregarious field

for earth and water.

I wait every night for the sea to spit my husband out,

undigested and handsome.

I like to straddle the dry lake bed,

the navy sea,

and wait for gifts from ether and water.

Hope

The afternoon latches and lunches

on my milky breasts.

My chest a shelf that weighty demons sit on.

Outside in the rocky yard Good Health and Old Age fight.

My eyesight is incredibly blue

and the world is incredibly pink,

so my life is biased toward purple.

I am as executable and cuddly as a queen.

The river is dry.

No baby boys float in baskets among the reeds.

My body floats off to sleep,

my mind sinks into self,

diving deeper and deeper to the mulberry core.

 

The Birds

The trees aim for the birds.
A cotton song sticks in my throat,
Warming me.
What a village of busted knee caps we live in.
I have not walked anywhere for days.
Over the hillocks and bluffs the sight of men marches
Naturally,
With no bodies to slow anything down.
What is there to see but birds
Skimming skeins of skyline,
Evading the green fanged death in the trees?

Female

A blue tunnel rimmed with rainbow spangled stars
Leads to a woman in a black field harvesting high heels.
She is old as winter,
Her hair violet,
Her eyes ultramarine stars flashing.
She is no one’s neighbor,
Born beneath a pile of cast stones.
Somewhere in the looming black wheat
Beneath the onyx ether
Girl children are born in red satin receiving blankets.