My Old Woman

When death fell asleep between my legs

One arm slung over my knee

I pulled her up to my leaking breasts

And heard her grind her teeth

—

Does not inhabit herself

Stun guns of solar hair and eye flash hide her age

Born in a mirror in water precariously unheld

Will never die

—

Sometimes runeface spreads

Wind wrinkling a lake

Dolphins flipping at eyes and mouth

Sometimes a crucifix

Nose the bent of spine

Splayed veins from eyebolts

—

A bit inconvenient

To die just to drop

This sticky lover

That loveless parent

If only one could just get plastic surgery

Change lives behind the shrubbery

—

Not fair

I get older so

Do you I

Never catch

Up you train me

For your death

To my patterns you do

Patterns I want something

To shock you

My namesake tree

To drop all its leaves

In the center of spring

Remind me what

I gain by being here

Love me in a hurry

—

Our granaries flowed with deposits of sweetest kernels

Like squirrels we were the saviors of a future

In winter’s clamp we siphoned liqueurs using deep-stemmed waterlilies

Returning to redeem we found brittle rock-sugar

Clouded air traps

Ice spikes

Fossil prints

—

Whenever I open my mouth: crater

Blisters I take for moonwalking shoes

Sentries out the front

Slips at the backdoor

The bloat floats

Fatwrapped

Fleafeeling

—

Two people have a third person between them

One of them is always responsible for her disappearance

Parched beehives in their stomachs they look everywhere

Lightning and smoke form duration in the I Ching clouds

She won’t say shoo