“a swan and its reflection on the water’s black surface” and then this bifurcated solidarity becoming power lines in tandem down a dirt road to a salt farm; pillars of light on a calculated hinge. /saltstone/: Where the cicada’s song from deep in the mangroves, shedding shells because they too have dreams of landing. The question: who here has swallowed the cause of all things that arise from a cause? The owl as heard at night: a-hoot awoken lotus flower, lightbourne olive branch pitter-pattering its vermilion arm into holding plum blossoms. Wooded swampland of the bullfrog call, the fig tree has new growth and Spanish moss, like hair. Scant delineations; a puzzle of roots where the sand has washed away interesting schema: sprung riverbones. Then what becomes of water—when the crane’s alarming gaze into some other summer—if she simply lost herself?
flatlands, to green—aubade
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I believe in want because of its cruelty. A box and my legs grew inward but one little place held back. Brick shade on ochre. The white-gloved girl standing off-center on a dirt road in the button-down coat. The worsted hat and a neck muff to delay the sting of a factory town backdrop. How pastoral and this has nothing to do with genitalia or the filters of protectivity and other social abuses. A buck-toothed birdhouse; horrible choices get invited into the distance. This vanquished sentiment a rack of heat the texture of downing.
heron too
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When winter grows up to become a perfectly lovely expendable body: barren brown limbs much like the languor of a woman deserted in the frenzy of grief. Someone is dying and everybody else with such exceptionally miscellaneous pride. Fragile narratives, “A change in her breathing so we planted on her back.” Her shrunken heart in decay. Her shriveled heart. Her completely still heart.
thanatos