’Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone.
John Donne
1 Morning
Unruly sun of anti-shadow that slides across the unplaned
floor, opens like a poppy on my reluctant face. Dawn
through window rime, while the elk wade through outside.
Dawn of his mother’s shot-dead doves and my belly
emptying again and again after I put some chemical in
to get closer to God. I wonder: Diana, where are you
when we walk out of the woods and the light is unkind on
our untouched skin? Where were you at the dawn
of these dog days, curled like a wall between us? Or waking
to a waterfall of grief? Dawn when I’m gone you’re
gone he’s gone? Waking to a white like new snow, stinging
light-blinded eyes, eyes on this empty room, empty
womb, vestigial organ—the past—ripped away like
some useless thing, bright biohazard, phantom—
ache, rising like the pink shine of an old scar?
2 Night
Night of leg drape, night of stomach pump. Night
of stockings and sex under Fauvist oil paint.
O night of guavas and La Llorona and a river
swimming with constrictors and those you used
to love. O night of woundings and wakings and first
times and last of the light. Night of choices, a long catching
and losing of breath. Revenant and respiratory thrum,
father-law and mother-tongue. The long
night listening for twig snap and low growl, or
the short night when he must leave at dawn.
O Lilith, dear Laylah: teach me to talk
in my sleep, build me a nest of twigs and shiny
things, wrap me up tight, silence this drum,
swaddle me as you would the insane.
©
is the Editor of Flagstaff & Sedona Business News and a freelance copywriter. Her creative work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Bellingham Review, Drunken Boat, MiPoesias, and Harpur Palate, and other journals. She holds an M.A. in English from Western Washington University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she was the first-year creative writing fellow and served as Associate Editor of Blackbird.
