SHE WANTS A FIRE, EVEN IN THE SUMMER
Sometimes a road is a major event.
A walk endures more than a calendar.
April January February March
Chest full of bluebells, breath a wet black bough.
March, March, marriage to a stage magician
Spring, again you love sawing me in half.
Coughing up fur balls, a wealth of wool, May
Rewilds me; foaming, I mouth May, a wolf.
Summer bestows few vows; December comes
As June’s bare effigy; a month, a tooth,
Falls out; jaws of the year breathing bluebells,
Giblet pies. I can write, or talk. Not both.
Should July have held hands with September?
August overdosed on June? Sun enough
In my marrow for wet stockings to do
For entire weeks of June; each breath
A word chesting up from the inky desk
Of heaviness; October was one month
Or three, I tell you; November, a road.
My feet set down December. Crip time’s betrothed.
DIVINING DOROTHY
& they turned up the cards –
the soy candle snickered –
something clicked; they said,
let’s call her up, a dream
of frail girls; genetic
sexual attraction –
place your hand, your hand, your –
flatly; hold a séance
the stones spoke owls;
the owls spoke walls;
the walls spoke moss;
the moss spoke most –
of nothing;
of frail girls.
COMING THROUGH
Stoner Dee in denim shorts,
heavy on the eyeliner,
shooting Andy Warhol first
NOT HER!
French-film, traffic-jam Doro
hits up Ellis Bell, deserts
her car, heads into the woods
ARE YOU THERE?
Frail girl, faint girl, violet,
between-the-liner, support
act, sister, let’s rescue you!
WHAT
Have we raised? In a top hat?
Drawling, “Call me Desmond. Come
to the cabaret”? & they
dropped the cards
put out the lights
stopped the clocks
declared her dead
picked a bowl
of daffodils,
unnerved by her
bodiful, double-rainbow laughter
ECOLOGIES OF ATTENTION
a table made of applewood
an apple grows at home
a woodland cored to press a fence
upon the apple’s home
a dance of seeds around the core
a round to dance alone
by heart you know the steps like men
like bears who sleep alone
see a storm, be in the storm, or stop
the storm: an act of will
stops the storm? in imitation
of a storm stopping by an act
not of will, if weather had will,
your will imitating the storm’s
flash of recognition: lightning
does not stop, makes eerie darkness
lightning that does not stop, stops, starts,
love, biting like love, more than like
i mouth slepe
lik grasse stalkes
lik querewolves
softe neckes
pterodactyl neighbourhoods
preen endure
toebean hazards
dinocure
editor! they’re on
the world stage!
laughing! and dancing!
when you know!
their body language!
should be pain!
cotton! cobblestone! pain!
editor! they’re speaking!
editorially! again! stopstop
good good pay
sob reproduce lawsuit
inscape gratitude outrage
lik holi thing
groaning aloft
an innocent
attention lapse
ecologies
of thistledown
neolithic
somnambulism
anyway we are sitting on one washed rock
together
for the indefinite
let’s talk
where from
place forgetting
place forgetfulness
place would forget
are you
fistful blood
library armies
conflagration bedrooms
piss-cup precious stones
wherefrom midnight
lunar lastday
calendar knocking
knocking the base of one of the statues
the plinth will open and
tell
they cannot build
they find
their echo chamber
the open sky
interesting! borrow a
rose garden! most
interesting! drum up
an adequate cohort
of toads! well
is
who
indigenous to horseback
is
who
indigenous to airports
is
who
native to swimming pools
is
who
native to deserts
is originally
appropriation
is originally
the longest queue
ancestry
strangers
ancestry
embers
ancestry
labourers
ancestry
lawyers
ancestry
mobsters
beggars piemakers
beautiful beggars
unpublished piemakers
priests on repeat
bridegrooms who make up their face
the fair and the fierce
the sun and the moon
sharing
a ring
anyway we are leaning in
on one washed rock
together for the indefinite
rise
by heart you know the steps like lace:
: a willingly pierced face
Dorothy Wordsworth 250 