Four Poems

Abstract

48 ELSPETH JENSEN Four Poems • The End Thorned bridge near the end of the road. Imagine the most horrible thing that could happen. Bent figure brooding at the end of the page. Because tight rolls of film are in the freezer, an empty box is waiting to divide the spoils. The garden had a book in the grass or a book had a garden in it. Buried treasure, time capsule, empty as a house. I was looking for the glass between us: first come, first hundred years ago, or so, but what is one or two more lifetimes imagined. The left house, a room fit for dying, closed 49 windows, nights of grabbling hands, rooms filled with mouths thick as walls. Summer broke the door open; the furniture didn’t dream about me. I couldn’t, I couldn’t— pulsed through the home, how people whisper not to wake us from our own. 50 Fable with Alternate Endings A dove in a grave splits the earth a psalm bleeds ink on the palm who slashed out wires and left the milk to sour I did not know what we were in for a spider wandering a wake up call on fire and brimstone breaks from the web like an old testament god I wreck my little shadow box world I made myself a catalogue of mistakes worn like a crown a throne a murder of crows knows my face everyday keeps turning over like a brood or an engine feels like the world is ending just a little chicken I say with my head cut off by the stars my feet thrumming toward iron gates streets named after birds and birds named after streets me or the running which came first. 51 Haunted Hallway You are the mechanism, pathways turning, walls posing, little window without motive. Rooms follow other rooms. The willow was felled without weeping. You need to catch the mouse, before the sun comes pitifully peeping, because ghosts crave massacre, snapped off little match girl, breath of madness, golden seabird, duffel bag bachelor. You can need hell, but the nightstand drawer keeps a deeper tomb. Knifeslick departure, home sweet sepulcher, lamp’s last flicker. 52 Tower Everything appeared at once: Tower. Dame. Hair. Beautiful child, you are made of desire surrounded by green. Therefore, child, grow into woman. A year or two more. Another inch of hair. Endure your body, your place. We all do. Your body is a place if it needs to. A little window grants. Darling, your unheard singing is golden, like your untouched body. Untouched rampions bloom. Prince. Man. Boy. Whomever. Wanders in. Listen. Need. Let down your braids, your ladder, like you’re made to. Desire, a window. Dark tower let him in. Secrets, dear girl, don’t fit in your narrow tower, spill from the window like hair. Tell the dame, with her silver scissors, The narrator made me do it! But she separates the world again. Separates sight from eyes. His wilted petals cannot see your beautiful body. Towerless one, wander 53 everything you wanted. Blunt hair. Pitiless desert. The nothing surrounding. Feel your body swell, carrying child. Half you. Half him. Whomever. Bear this kingdom of afterward. You must sing. Your voice as before now echoes. Your body is still a tower. ...