Poem: Anonymous

portrait of loss

one:

her blood / close to water / cyclic
awareness of omens
not memory / knife scars
on her calves / where she bled loss
from her body

records cryptic
prophecies / a purple-skinned
volume / burns the pages
in dreams of drowning

stays close to water / announces
pull of moon hallowed / her body
bleeding / a magnet hidden
in blood / no nectar in silence


two:

photos of the black dog
gone blind and deaf / now dead

sifts through dust
collecting on her hands / eyes
yellow and brittle

opens small room curtains / stands
smiling / an echo / knows
memory as light
turned inward

small red birds nest
in the tree outside her window
_____

her grandfather / consumed
by cancer / stepped over
the inscrutable line / left his body
to the earth
_____

(mourning / she smiles / loss
not quantified by color
or scent of lilacs)

pours merlot / dreams this night
she eats her dog's dead body / disturbed
by the taste / grey flesh / disturbed
by her own laughter


three:

days dispel themselves / wandering
as a minstrel where music
can never be heard / a place
without walls / windows/ without
a surface for sleep

alone in this desert / feels . . .
subterranean
_____

loss / a disease
beyond flesh / skin shed
as a rattlesnake
wriggles through renewal

harsh surface of stones / sand
spiders /doesn’t trust sunlight

horror of a vulture
atop a saguaro / stilled
lizard in its beak

these omens of loss
she feels . . .

subterranean

a place where wind
silences words / where
she is lost
without the cool scent
of water


~ poem submitted by Anonymous (comments will be forwarded)