he sleeps twisted inside of me
hands tight on my bruised lungs
if I had a voice
with him
it would slice my own tongue
and when he moves to awake
his easy turn on my hand
burns through everything I know
one slow thrust into my dignity
and I split in two
and I don’t know
which one is me
The dragon doesn’t wake with the sun. It is warmed
through mock light, on an affected cove. It looks
like it could be made of mopani,
but he cannot tell colors
what they should be
and what they are not.
I left him a note, this morning, by his glass house.
In his rest, he inhaled the pushed warm air
that circulates my blood each night.
I promised him Aspen and Cabbage and
my return.
I am late. I am always pushing the clock
into my lungs, back to my cycle,
back to little hands and little
feet swirling around
a glass house,
tearing cabbage for a dragon that
constantly stares at me.
Demons sleep in the deep white,
a place to rest while
laundry drowns without ultimatum,
while dismembered chickens
swell in heat – sticking to
bits of parsley that grew this year.
People expire faster than milk.
If it isn’t there taste, it’s their
noises or gestures
or lack of reflection.
Kids are running off to school,
I leave the bread in the toaster.
One more day, slice open the demon,
crawl inside
guilt grows off walls
shames eats at intestines
all the people go, go, go
off to let me sleep in the deep
white.
I fold my dirty body next to the sun as it falls to sleep across a boneyard.
Our Daughters sleep in there, clinging on to life and on to death.
They strip down to breast and bone for swine,
gnawing on their own skeletons for some Great Man to tame them.
They play in ash playgrounds, burnt down by thieving snakes of virginity.
Our hands can do nothing.
Our Book does nothing.
Our Sons are bound, shackled by veins to elusion.
They strain, barefoot in the desert where demons build their muscles on doubt and hesitation.
Fear is a great interruption to the infant shadows that remain young nuisances
until trepidation grips its claws around their hollow shoulders and carry them away.
And, as the boneyard grows next to me. I lay, with burnt wings, in a chill that never dies.
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