These poems are still available on the magazine’s website.
Stargazing near sunset mine
I am greed & salt; my tongue heavier
than my heart; nose & mouth & Mercury,
silver-gilt tributary eyes, drift down
stream from my romantic brain;
current of swallowed wings: butterflies
& angels & canaries; I wanted to be
interrupted —
watch ditchwater dreams grow bodies
of thorn & vine, moon-blessed & sacred
as the dust that once was our bodies;
sulphur mine mind, a trail of tailings
that stain the mountainside; my love, not
my love, my shadow, my self, my
heart before
the cave-in, bail out; a collapse of stars,
an overwhelm of glow; my love, not my love,
the dissolution that makes me small, makes
my elements flicker, bleed antimony & Mars;
my love, not my love, fall out of solution, we
never were; in another life you hold my heart.
Becoming the crone
I have earned each of these —
threads of winter, stolen silver
split from moonbeams reflected
over an ocean of being, a body
made of waves, a body I made
tear by tear until I disappeared
inside, this strange structure of
whisper & suture, stitch by stitch
close me in & I will become these
limbs by the grace of experience;
my spell woven from the last words
of the last song I heard, the slow turn
of the seasons, collected endings slip
like pages smudged by the inky ridges
of my graceless hands; let me find
the art in waning, let me love this inning
of endings, let my whole head go bright
long before I go dark.
Banishing
They say if you know them by name
you can send them away; cut the syllables
as if they were a ribbon & your tongue
an athame. But my voice is longing-drunk,
it bends under the weight of his song; my love,
I’d tuck half the letters of your name around
the heart on my sleeve & send the rest to the stars,
let it fill the sky like summer water, soft fingers
to cradle the woods that burn & stain the night
orange & terrible. I love you & I burn. I release,
I release, I release. I breathe the smoke in deep
& beg the night to take you & leave me cold.