A Magazine of Many Arts

books remember

abandoned
the roof falls in
and the walls cave in
and the floor cracks wide

the rain and the sun
touch their spines
and they remember
that they were trees
once
deep rooted and tall

and trees they become again
pages melting beneath water and light
falling
settling in the rich earth

and they grow
trunks engraved with the words
of cather and whitman
leaves shimmering
with the verses of basho and dickinson
branches whispering
whispering

winds rise and rush
storms carry word-seeds
high and far
forests of poem-ash and myth-maples
groves of tragic-oak and satire-thorn
grow deep-rooted and tall
a world of stories
nurtured
by a library of trees

Detroit Book Depository

I.

Before sunrise I tie rags around my ankles.

Blades of grass lick my legs as I fatten
with dew. Your fairy throat can’t swallow
the other kinds of water. Your lips soften
dough-like butterflies. I wring the

tatters of my homespun dress.
Your paralysis breaks, your hands
two dragonflies — they waver — your wings
cobwebs, encrusted in a woodland case of sores.

I bathe you, comb you, dress you
mimic your motions with a decade-old delay.
Raising children must be like
sowing yourselves in the ground.

II.

Before sunrise I tie rags around my ankles.

Blades of grass lick my legs as I fatten
with dew, as my calves grow slower
and slower, as I drag my feet
through dirt. Once I found your stolen shawl

Buttery-white, hidden by father so
you would not leave us. You said you didn’t want it
and smiled. Your teeth started falling
one by one. You crushed them into sugar

— for me. Your hair started thinning
braid after braid. You turned it into flour
— for me. Your eyes rolled on the ground —
you made them into soup — for me, for me.

If you could cut yourself in pieces and
bake them in the oven — one arm pie, one leg roll —
you would, you would — for me. Because
fairy mothers think their

children ought to devour them.

III.

Before sunrise I tie rags around my ankles.

Blades of grass lick my legs, as I fatten
with dew, as my calves grow slower
and slower, as I drag my feet
through dirt, as I listen to the rust

of tatters, of my homespun dress
of the rags around my ankles, heavy
with dew — for you, for you. Mother,
you always tasted bitter. The songs

you didn’t sing, the flights
you didn’t fly. This is my dowry
and this
is my inheritance.

IV.

Before sunrise I tie rags around my ankles
— I breathe, I breathe —
blades of grass lick my legs
my rugs, my chains, as I fatten

with dew, as my calves grow slower
and slower, as I drag my feet
through dirt
and walk
through meadows
and my lips crave

for morning dew.

Illustration for ” Drottningens halsband ” (The queens necklace) by Anna Wahlenberg in “Bland tomtar och troll” (Among gnomes and trolls), 1914.

Rainy nights in my Neon-966
white seats awash
the color of day-glow pearls,
a can of Rainier tucked
warm between my legs.

Sadie in the backseat
swears she saw a mutie
last Friday night in Denny Park,
sulking in the shadows
with the ghost of Mia Zapata,
(so she’s clearly already fried)

Easy Street Records,
drinks at Sakura’s [æ¡œ],
then on to Jaron’s house
where he sells us something
that’s supposed to be like Syth-2.

Pill popped and pinpoint pupiled
and we’re finally cooking
bass thudding
with the drug in our ears
the city comes to life,
even the bums cast
indescribable tremors of light
with their every movement,
vivid auras in the dark.

Off of Yesler
we stumble across
an abandoned-house party,
some local wailers playing inside
probably talentless
but to us it resounds
an orgasm in minor key
so shots and beers
and someone gives Carter
a long wet kiss,
but when empty kegs
put the band to rest
we end up driving down the road,
chests ahum with the buzz
of truthful and passionate
and pointless conversation.

Later,
smoking and throwing bottles
off a cliffside near the highway
we can just barely glimpse,
through the ocean’s spray,
the clean white blinking lights
of the new city
hovering out above Puget Sound;
all alloy and pretension
a hundred thousand people,
kids of six or seven
whose feet have never
touched the ground,
automated, self sustained,
and from where we stand,
the whole thing smaller
than my hand held up to the sky.

Somehow it seems
higher and higher each day,
proof maybe that the old city
is still sinking,
after all these years
succumbing to the soft
wet maw of the earth.

illustration is from Unsplash and was published under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Page of an edition (1907, J. Gwenogvryn Evans) of the Black Book of Carmarthen (1250).