Poetry

the lake becomes a ghost. i decide 
to lie down in its place. for comfort, 
i polish its bed smooth, quilt a pallet 

The white slap of the moon after hail gone through
ivy to silver April’s first green blades: There I listened 

Cézanne doesn’t paint what he sees.
His apples are orange.

I am more than the world you asked me to be— 

Bow to the peaches heavy and timeless, wrapped in sheets of cool.

I feel compelled to give you an ending, a promise of hope 

and all its straight-razor backroads planted with plaster 
farmhouses bowing to January’s muddy expanse

I can take even more 
Than he can give.

1. an investigation of wrecked arterial railroads hammered by foremothers
stationed beneath your breasts and headed
 crown-bound

Sometimes when I get
My period,
I wake up & my bed 
Is a massacre.