#dwiag1s

they are water. Morning's not a new dress for the lake to wear. Everyone's misgendering the moon, or fabricating sheets of night to pull across their blushing shame before the nudity of stars. I am not your clay. Where do you think I go when you’re not dreaming? Waiting at the bus stop for a future that already came. I will not be your catalogue of grave goods: high status woman with necklace, harp, and wine. You made a giantess out of the clouds this afternoon— of course, her hair was only gentle rain. I will not help personify these bodies, do not make me. I will not speak through hands and knees your death sentence into other mouths, you are a drowning thing. And they are water. * * * Written October 2020.

I wander to them in my mind—& other places I am equally ambivalent about: a wicker vase that once held plants beside some crooked stairs; poster of a whitewashed portal, arched & baking by the bluest-blue Cycladean sun; a Persian rug, open concept with a black-&-white portrait of Churchill scowling on a dining room we never ate in— there I wait by the landing to mourn Apollo on a bicycle, & dream about a thousand sleepovers on a million different basement stairwells haunted by hands. My favourite house had a bathtub with legs; the one window always looked on summer— & one or more for every other season, too: a streetlamp library of crazed winterglass; a chimney St. Nick rode a motorcycle thru; our neighbours fenced in Huron ossuary, letting their dogs shit in the pool. I dream of them, now, beside the boneyard— grounded in other houses by the backwoods, remembering the creek & other crossings that sunlight never touches on the traffic in lake-secrets. & we are wild in the dream, that we are lost— that it is possible we are never found. * * * Written March 2019.

this wordless weight will not withstand the scrutiny of scripture; I wake each furled day the deathbed of damp letters, unabsolved— yet shelter for the vagrant ghost, this body of regrets  & grave of ink: this poem—I confess! will die with me, priestess. * * * Written August 2018.

& deepens to the shoulder, there anoint my undine hair with muskeg oil— reeking wood, my river reliquary wades in reedy pilings yet, a voice of secrets:          oh  my sisters! sing search party for the body of words— when all this sacred past unfolds the creasing stone; where tamarack & willow will recall my lover  sweetly to the snapdragon & peatmoss, we wrote our names in rosequartz on the wall. * * * Written September 2017.

& i am almost gone: trace  on riverbed, egress of claws; a body of salt—   thief! impostor! cut your hair; my pale gown of silt was wedded in sweetwater— only bones of words; only memory of rust opens  harbour mouth, to traffic in teeth: i am here, & i am almost * * * Written September 2017.

a blinded light  Venetian by the cabin's browning grace speckled  cicadasong, sweetly: there  in dark & thunder; there in cupboards  dusting, dingying the daylight— there slept my bride on claybed  in the lake, sealed with a ring of kisses sweetly as that woodenness of owls  hooting up the steeper steps, awoke at night to flip a lightswitch dream of spiral stairs— of climbing up cathedral vault the dryadoak— & sweetly, as into the arms of sisterhood; some offering of clay to sculpt that bitten tongue: a broken dream of axes, rippling the years with songs we'd sung. * * * Written August 2017.

a roomful of cycles & other wheeled vehicles; all a missing engine  speaking spokes: of places only hallways lead— to doppler doors  an arrowslit; plumb row of empty chairs  on upper floors awaiting sunlit walkers  ticking tock; sifting walls of stairs for windows left unlocked. * * * Written October 2017.

to the mud: from     jumping rock, countess of gingerbread castle  to the dark blue lips of the piny lake. I will not know my claydaughter— she cracked inside me; some sandy rib collapsed the kiln where hornets hive thin film of shaking wings. I hear you still; my claydaughter dreams of being locked in malls at night— singing skeleton key of toystore, wipes sleep from jellybean eyes to brush the hair of dolls. O! My claydaughter  you are unglazed in ashes; they will break you— they will tear you limb from limb. You are unmade  claydaughter— be soft again  sweet girl; return to watermother fired of the piny earth, to blanket lakebed in the vessel dream. * * * Written August 2017.