Rapunzel

After a month in the tower,
her bones thinned
as she learned
to live with less.

Her limbs became
like knitting needles;
they clicked together
as she paced her cell,

and their ends were sharp
with angles. Each year
was like a stone against which
she honed her hunger.

The golden flax of her hair
grew pale and began to fall out,
and the floor became thick
with its soft coils.

It was this tangle
that gave her hope,
and she began to gather
her beauty up,

to turn it into
something useful.
No rope has ever been
better loved.

Magic

With the right
kind of hands,
I know I could
pull the sun’s light
up from the soil,
until the heat of it
races through
hollowed paths
underneath my
paper skin,
burning its way
to a steady place
of white heat
resting in
the middle
of my chest
like a moon.
With this kind
of light, my heart
could pull to it
the flight of
one single moth,
regal-feathered,
dumb but wise.

Boating

Today’s clouds are
pink candy
cotton pulled
across blue sky.

Our boat cuts
a steady path
straight through
the tallest willows.

In the water I see
a single swan feather
caught by a reed.
The water moves them both.

You pull us forward
in an even rhythm.
My heart is
just as certain.

Birdlike

After the operation,
she told me her husband
had bought another year.

I understood her smoking—
a hope to catch up to him
sooner than later.

Each day she gathered her thin limbs
under the wide knit of black sweaters,
their warmth against too much cold.

She is beautiful like a heron;
her shape holds both sorrow
and the joy it takes to carry on.

Blood and desire
gathered hot
at the base
of her throat,
until it opened
wide as a trumpet.

Her voice had waited
a long time, quietly.
The sound of
her scream was
raw like hail
and alive like thunder.

It was also like
an echo, buried
deep in the ear
of each who heard,
and it does not
seem to end.

Pestilence

The ground was covered;
it writhed with bugs,
their pale white bodies
gnawing and fucking
and laying eggs.

My fist fell
with a dark, wet smack.
The strange chemical
scent of their blood
burned my throat.

So I got the gloves
and the garden shears
and the killing jar,
and I took to murder
with better precision.

I washed my hands, but
the stink of their
neon guts is stuck
fast to the grooves
of my every finger.

Home

It is when you come in
that I notice the sun behind you,
its fevered cast as it

Blushes itself awake,
framing your shoulders
in a mantle of light.

It is in this light
that I can see two sides,
the bright coin aloft as it twirls:

Life, the heat of its breathing,
the fire of dawn, the sun’s
graceful persistence.

The spectre of death,
a shadow at noon,
waiting patiently.

It rushes over me,
one great flood to fill
my parched heart,

And I thank God
that all I love
is safe at home.

When she dives into the lake,
her pale skin lights the water
like a lantern.

With each scissor kick,
the depths dance around her legs
like green ribbons.

She was born for the water,
the way some people are
born for God.

Watching her shape as she swims
is like holding a petal, then knowing
the weight of the whole flower.

Calm

He is steady
at the center
of her torrents
and passions.

For him
she becomes
gentle, as waves
become gentle
when they gather
along a shore.

He owns her
like an island
owns the sea.

Similar

He is like a flood, rushing
strong over the shape of her, and
he makes her forget how to breathe.

Or he is like a lush green field,
clover-dotted, tended by bees,
and he turns her into honey.

But really he is like a wolf after the kill,
pulling the meat of her apart with gentle teeth
until she sleeps, smiling, inside his belly.