The Tower (XVI)One moon for night. One moon for day. Fear has a mothering instinct, too. It'll heal you sideways / it'll tell you a man can continue to exist when he ceases to be what he never was. The heart cracks open like a clam shell. Say a prayer for light. Say a prayer to Our Lady of the Perpetual Want for Cures. You wouldn't help yourself if you could. The Star (XVII)The aftermath begins with asking for a question. The question begins & does not middle. Memory is a boardwalk with small lights you do not tell the first man who walks beside your post-heartbreak body which has become an origami body. (To fold is to unfold a previous pattern/ to see is to unfold a previous pattern.) Look you do say the stars are sprinkled like angel spit. Judgment (XX)Heaven, that moonshiner wrapped in silk, tastes you. You belong where you break it says. You feed your mind its spin-off minds. You put together new fires. You pluck gravel until it turns to petals & back. Say hey heaven I'm hungry. Say hey heaven, just hey. Ruth Baumann is an MFA student at the University of Memphis, & former Managing Editor of The Pinch. Her chapbook I'll Love You Forever & Other Temporary Valentines won the Salt Hill Dead Lake Chapbook Contest, & her poems are published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, New South, Sonora Review, Sycamore Review & others listed at www.ruthbaumann.com |