Tattletale

"Mad as a March Hare,"; they say of me.
But all I have is a rabbit, a white white rabbit,
hoppity rabbit, bloody little rabbit,
claret and garnet, I could eat him and wear him,
rings around my fingers and bloody rings around my mouth.
I could ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross.
But there are no paths in this mad forest
just a bloated cat whose face floats like a moon but sheds no light.
The only luminosity is the blood on my skin.
I was once so pale, virginal and void
until he touched me maddened by mercury,
silvery beads, pewter rain.
Is that why I am so confused, his grubby fingers and white white paws?
But I can't say anything, little tattletales burn.
If I tried to speak my tongue would split,
my eyes would fossilized, hard as turtle shells.


"Drink me"; the bottle said, bitter taste, raw almonds.
But it promised oblivion from my mad hatter father,
black felt around my ankles, my wrists and my neck.
The old ghost story, untie the black choker,
then a flinch then a splatter as her head drops off.
I wish mine would. Now that would be oblivion.

Ride a horse to Banbury Cross but what do you do then?
And wouldn't there be wolves who think,
they all ride to Banbury Cross.
with their hoods of red fur, riddles and ravens.
I wouldn't be pure enough for a woodsman to save.

Afterthought

The blood will come. When the first knife cuts,
a red thread to be spun into a hood of garnet grasshoppers.
He has had so many, young throats, tender fingers.
At first they cried for mother and father, maybe God.
Who knows whom their father was.
There was always the blood, that was the grace,
a family of stick figures, a father, a mother
and nine little girls salvaged from prairie grit,
tumbleweeds rolling like chrysanthemums.
The mother was the first, a prized bauble, a trinket.
Just to keep things proper.
They did things right,
the blood was an afterthought.
That's all.

Slipping


We camp out in a warehouse, eat three day old sandwiches,
the cheese stiff as cardboard, edges curling.
I start to rock, my hands curled into seed pods,
my mama's rocking chair, maize dust pillow.
She didn't really have a mother so she didn't know
what to do. You feed me chocolate
scraped from a shiny wrapper. "We will be different,"
you promise, pulling me into your lap, your body
falling into the rhythm of my rocking. Then you twist the foil
into a ring, silver as the chrome on my Daddy's T-bird.
He would polish it for hours, his cloth swooping like a bird. He flew away
when I was eight. I flew away when I was sixteen.
I left the same note. "Hi. Can't stay. Love." We had to slip away:
doorway, highway, mudflat thicketed with hubcaps
and tractor parts. "Stay," you whisper, silver
as Mama's painted nails, nicks of moon in the mirror
as she braided my hair, the strands slipping
from her fingers, always coming loose.