Marsupial Chronicles

Mother -

she has written me a heart attack
lines like octopus arms
word suckers on tentacles

red X’s dangle over childhood
like clown mobiles bobbing to
slow carnival music

girls play dolls
animate plastic receptacles
they can pour over dreams
mannequins to hang emotions on
in cloth and paper
girls hang on meat hooks
skin gray cold
impenetrable

I am the dollhouse
she reaches inside to move furniture
plastic bodies
arranged naked
for conversation

my womb whispers familiar accusation
tiny hands yawn under plastic lining
reaching for arteries

my jaw is lined with volumes
sautéed sketches steam
off burning
parchment

my neck aches with memory

Creator -

words hold me tightly
metal coils weaved under skin
binding fragments into the whole
uncapped veins flow
fine spider’s webbing
dressed prettily
with dew

his head is lined with newspaper
a nest of squawking vampires to feed
he licks my ears like lollipops

cherry blossoms blanket me
I am the showered root
under loosed blossoms
bled off
my own tree

such is
the exquisite horror of time
grass grows over us
while we are still counting
branches
for
shade

branches sprout in my mouth
so that I cannot stop
biting flesh

leaving meat out to spoil
is what emotions feel like,
exposed and rotted 

conversations feel like hot water

poured over gravel

when I want
to summon
terror
I imagine the roll

of disgust
at a spider
creeping along
bare flesh
while I sleep

or

that you
can see
me

Creation -

lucid rain splashes our face
salty brine
ladled from sleep
lightning slapping clouds

fish glide under surface skins
peek their mouths into air
murmuring
poetic lines in gulps
as they skim across water

turtles paddle a thousand miles
make trails across sand
to bury eggs under the moon
before slipping
back
into the blue

a sylph maid
curves the sun-hook
out of her silk
flesh
her scales catch moonlight
as she dives inside blood-tinged sea

to fish
for
words

The Dreamer -

while god sits dreaming
spools of yarn
for tangled webs

fingering dew
that clings to lace

children cocooned
in swaddling white
their bright moans crackling

my flashlight circles your shadows
bright eyes look back at you in dreams

she wanted her pages burned after death
what did she imagine would grow
from the ash -
black sands for terra cotta soldiers
the fragile bones of babies’ hands
or
one bright fire to
warm two hands
under moonlight -

it is the most
that any of us can ask
of art