Stillborn, adj.

One week later, I looked up stillborn.
Feeling too done-before, and shocking
in its frequency, and like a dirty word
that was something that described us,
science or statistics that made my mouth
constrict and then soften with moisture.

I went to the library to do it, feeling
guilty and disgusted reading about
myself in my own dictionary, but
theirs was great yellowed white,
crackling pages, millions of words
and people looking for themselves

there, I found a moth pressed
between the pages, like its own
little translucent, ephmeral leaf,
with veins for words, and blood
drained out, and more years dead
than living, and through its forewing

I read (of an infant) born dead.

Floating Haiku

fruit dye and water
horsehair sutured to slim wood
paints a butterfly

fold down the middle
so flat wings mimic flapping
sit her like resting

imagine she lifts
wings become brushes themselves
and she paints a girl

Feast of Flowers

Aconite.  Anemone.  Autumn Crocus.
Fat purple pads, succulent and sliced
by stripes of indigo drizzled or heaped
like angel hair over bone china
on a lazy susan.  Baneberry,
Christmas Rose, Deadly Nightshade,
Foxglove, and the Iris. 

                                       Neighbors watched
her build the greenhouse last winter—
first in her dark jacket with dark
buttons, then shirtless, just sweating
and raising walls in white sun
with bare arms and a strong back—
they watched for her mouth and
several times they shook while
pouring water into glasses, but
never offered.

                          Ivy, Jimson Weed,
the root of one Mandrake, curled like a
fetal Medusa.  Each day, they watched
as the glass fogged and breathed clear,
until green began to grow up along
its insides and shut the world out
for good.  Brave boys almost climbed
the frame and followed the sun inside,
but they heard a shuffle and the clang
of a spade and their hair stood up.  Oleander,
Rock Poppy, Spring Adonis.

                                               So they waited
late into springtime, watched her mostly—
naked with boots, shorn hair, heavy glasses,
carrying armloads of cut flowers inside—
thought they saw her bite a May Apple—
eight trips for wisteria, heavy like grapes—
wondered should they bring vases and
how her fingers must have looked,
how red or purple they must be, how deep
were the thorns, how chartreuse the thumbnails.

Still I look up missing girls.

Between trees along the roadside, there is an umbrella.
Its great downturned blossom—bluebell or reverse tulip—
is small-world round and banded with turquoise, fuchsia,
pale pink—size is hard to gauge from here, but the brightly
budding colors dazzle schools on rainy mornings. 

                                                                                         Travel
down flamboyant petal and silver stem, to the handle,
which is red, and plastic, and curved to fit a smaller hand,
and there are thoughts of soft palms and paint that spills
off tiny nails and onto skin. 

                                                   Imagine the hands connect to arms,
connect to narrow mid-section and still maybe a child’s tummy,
to neck growing longer with years, to a head to eyes that blink
and well with changing feelings, hurt feelings, or something else?
 

Think of the hair, maybe long and brown and soft and wispy
and brushed that morning by a mother who trims it with kitchen
scissors and sprays in detangler, dresses it with dandelion, and
runs her hands across it and breathes as it dries.

                                                                                      And there is an umbrella
along the roadside, between the trees, and underneath is a broken
metal spoke that collapses a nylon rainbow against earth, and maybe
it was thrown in jubilation as the sun came out and the drops stopped
souping up the forest’s edge—and she took a shortcut home from the bus stop.

five.

Walking Web

I am caught          like a fly            in a web
though I am moving and have broken it

From twigs         and branches          that string it
blue, cold, skyward and tether its ends to the hot center

I am carrying          it with me         over shoulders
and neck like a noose or long pendant, I’ll wear it forever

Sometimes          it glistens          on my skin
sometimes I scratch and pull at infinite fragments

Each bit falls         away, nothing          visible remains
but still I am traced by silk and bound by its feeling on my skin

Light, down         to nearly nothing          you can’t see
that it’s there in my hair or on my face, under finger nails.

Degenerate

Broken by a fall out of bed
the pain didn’t wake me but the noise
lack of crack, a slow rumble
flipped me sideways like thunder
hitting my eardrums from inside
and hammering dully on my brain
as with elbows that don’t relent
self-defensive and close to the danger
the pain became the noise
filled with fragments of femur
my leg was red and liquid fire
They’d told me the bones would start breaking
that red and white would disintegrate
like sands from different deserts
and yes those sands were rubbing and mixing
and creating a frenzied whir
humming electric as I lay on the planks
later my collarbone in the dressing room
and all the toes while sitting perfectly still
my biggest bone had broken
now I would wait for help
and then wait for breaking