wearing--green

When I dream, it is still of rich brocades or the feel of an arrow between my fingers.  I don’t dream often, which is something of a blessing. Sometimes, though it is not nearly as bad as it was before, I think Peter would leave school for the war effort, just to feel that rush again.  (I’m not sure I blame him.)  I envy my younger siblings their ability to live with one foot in both worlds so effortlessly.  Perhaps it is because they know they will go back again. I thought we had learned this time around.  There isn’t that gaping, wounded sense of loss as there was the last time, when we didn’t make the choice on purpose

I. there was blood on my hands everyone seemed to know something wasn't right. i couldn't say anything. the gaping of my silent mouth reminds me now (comically) of Ariel before she realizes how well and truly gone her voice is. there was no sea witch bargain for true love there was only my life in the balance. and so i learned to carve and demean. i hung trophies around your neck and you licked the blood from my fingers, praising, purring. no, i haven't been watching Silence of the Lambs. i woke to the sound of my cats fighting, bumping their furry bodies against my footboard. (but it might have been your feet on the stairs.

1. Geese glide in flotillas over a man-made pond.   I only see armadas when it’s stormy.   Salo Park is safe haven from the choppy water of Silver Lake, but ducklings still drown, pushed against concrete barriers I remain too concerned with the life and death of ducklings, panicking when I see one separate from his fuzzy brothers and sisters, drifting too close to the goose battleships or streaking across the water away from a lone male. I was driving to work one sunny afternoon, and the driver ahead of me had never read Make Way for Ducklings.   They became brief, brilliant red sprays. I think I’ll teach the babies

The oil pumps in the fields stand still like moas in natural history museums while rag doll ghosts blow in trees. The houses have ghosts of their own, lining every piece of abandoned machinery and sagging hen house. Every man to a house in the 30s has become a skewed for sale sign ironically stamped with ‘won’t last long.’ God has forgotten Bible Grove, and the whole place waits to be remembered looking like someone has decided to set The Grapes of Wrath in a scrap yard.

Wendy took off for Neverland, knowing only that she could not have this adventure without her brothers, for it was, perhaps, to be their last Great Adventure. Her aunt had frightened her, you see, with talk of a woman’s chin and a hidden kiss. Time, it had seemed to her just then, was terrifying. The thing was, in Neverland, nothing was as it seemed. Faeries were not all sweetness and light, and mermaids would happily drown you. And the boy Pan?   Pan was careless and did not understand her at all. But then, there was Hook. Hook, who she had made everything of her brothers’ nightmares, was nothing like that at all. W

I would like to die someplace wet so my body will go quickly, all this terrible liquid rejoining its font.   I can think of few fates worse than being mummified, the skin forever clinging to the bones, unable to let go. The way the lips pull back makes me think the skeleton is struggling to push through into its beauty, away from the trappings of earth.

They say that Cleopatra wasn’t Liz Taylor gorgeous.   It was her boldness and wit that drove Caesar mad. In the stacks of the library at Alexandria, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. A continent away, Caesar’s men chased down Iceni daughters. Their milk-pale, freckled bodies broke under the onslaught of centurian spears. Their Mother-queen rode into battle, bringing the night-dark wings of the Morrigan down on her enemies. Rumor has it, both Cleo and Boudica died of poison.   They might have talked strategy together, red head, bent to dark one. “Horses, my dear?” “Oh no, elephants, like

This morning, while driving to work, I saw Baba Yaga. I wondered why she had traded in the chicken-leg house for a beat-up Buick.   Do you suppose the black horseman was driving?   Maybe the white. Were they listening to Smetana’s Ma Vlast? I imagine she has a phonograph, not a radio at all. Were you sent or do you come of your own free will? Like Vasalisa, I come to prove myself. It is the right answer And she gives me poppy seeds and dirt.   But why should I separate them? I scatter the earth, and red blooms burst from the ground.   Above the scree of her mortar, I hear her laughing.   I think, maybe, she has needed to lau