Inhabiting the Story of Laura


I tried to inhabit
her life I wanted
to become angled and reaching 
as a branch
stark against the naked gust
of fall
my unfurled hair 
a gleaming flag uncut
I would tweak death
I would live twice 
at once
but backwards
in the printed brown
of her cloth
I’d skip the landscape grasses
with androgynous eye
ears tuned
in winter I would harbor
my own spark
buried deep as kneaded bread
folded in on itself
subtle as the unsulfered molasses
of beans
it’s true
cedar can be so lovely
dressed in deadly snow
dazzling even
in its deception
a story 
it’s about yearning 
to face something wild-toothed
stare it down
make even my mother
slightly afraid






Fort of Blankets

​
built over the sidewalk
in this neighborhood of no grass

where a massive chestnut tree
casts costly shade
over its choke collar of concrete
rust-brick houses press close

Beatrice invites me in
I crouch down through the doorway
her bedroom blanket 
auras rosy over my telling 
of mountain stories
abandoned mills and mines
heavy revolvers
and dealings with spirits
the need to navigate the dark with care

she seems to like the part
about the spirits and the dark
asks for more
our limbs lazily touch

rough scrape of sidewalk
muffled thin as the comfort we spin
I know now that I want to kiss her
like a sister
but had no words for it then

blue eyes and brown
round as a settled world



First published in Songs of Eretz Poetry Review