An enterprising chooser of the slainThought to select him: not Death,As he had feared, but surely Her bondsmanTherefore to stay and fightAmong the bright blades, his own way.Haber agreed readily; Nobel was relievedTo see the wounds spring back healedEach night, all forgiven at the feast.They had seen sad-eyed warriors before. Robert,Chewing his pipestem, nerves still …
When I died I rose to meet myself, not quite as shadowed leaves touch leaves that fall on water, meeting palm to palm. Then verges ever on the yet-to-be, is never this, now, here. Nowhere a kiss, and onward from that instant O and O. I wake no travelling. On either bank, the trees are …
The Fates persist in fractal layers,the tapestry they weave spreads fingers, grips skeinsthe work itself a weaver,that winds yet another copythrough the warp, piling colorsuntil the shuttle gives riseto coils of minute artisans, who wind the reverse sidesof countless lives until the scene that draws me out arrives, threading stone and flesh, kings, priests and …
Turn back from these precipices,where the wind strikes its wind harp with jagged fingers of rock and bone.Sure, you died, but that’s not the rare jewel you think it is. You don’t get to call me as if you own me, as if you know me, to ask for anything from me. You seek the forgotten powers, but I …
The amount of architecture requiredto ferry the dead must be momentous: train tracks of finely wrought silver runacross the shores by the black rivers, shuddering near each otherwith calculated blasts of power. Over the gray dust speed the carsof the dead; on the far bank she stands and cries where are you, far from the …
It comes in waves, in subsurface currents. Some believe a soul can leave the body days before death and hover nearby as a ball of lightning dutifully attending the roll call of the dead: a crowd of afterimages, the ghosts of ghosts. We are swollen with death we have not caught up to yet. Infection …
1. I’ve keened, cracked dryas riverbeds before rain, heart pressedto cactus thorns till flowers bloomed brightas the dancer’s painted hands, and youcalled me exotic. Who then stole this voice? 2. If I dig into dry earth, ember-studded, callingthe red-mouthed mother to swallow me,if I climb nanofibers out past this sea of smoke,fall thin-aired into orbit, …
-.egg.- lapsarianism, or something like it, come to town, this town, that town, on the whisper of the morning’s mournings. . -.larva.- we cannot repent nor repeal and release ratify and rectify what we cannot regret, no matter whose door is darkened, face bruised by blacklight. . -.first instar.- he could remember his mother, or …
