#dogged

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself... ---Anne Sexton, “You, Doctor Martin”

I was wrapped in black fur and I was

wrapped in white fur and the moon

was rising like slow bad laughter.

I was drenched in gown

light and I was drenched

in bone light as my window’s moon

waged its danger in anger

that it had not been the prettier sister.

The moon was wrapped in ashes

and the moon was drenched in silvers

and it followed me a committed but

manipulative lover whetting its pebble

tongue as it turned my face foreign

from mother in the mirror

where my eyes turned antiquated

moons, full black doubloons, and I

could no longer pronounce

what I was after.

It seemed from every where

every thing beautiful looked on

at the blank page panic of my new skin

my new hunger’s black arrow

blipping---telling me where to begin.

My giving way giving out giving in.

Take your last tremble, I said

you will be yourself by morning thinking I’d wake naked and radiant

in a field the next day not knowing what

I’d done or where I’d been in the night.

Rising to shake the fine lines

of dust from my hide. Rising to run

until it’s dust and the dust recedes

like the details of some damn dogged dream.