swansisters

Remembrance I will not remember, an ice spurred window is more forgiving. Your words a drought, leaving me heat broken. I want ice. Reverberations of your presence wither. I am still trying to find the nerves you dismembered. A beggar swaps the core of my heart for an old wool coat, moth splattered holes. I will not remember. I will section existence, stop my eyes from reproducing hollows. I will not remember. My flesh always suspicious, my eyes pigeon-toed with vacancy. I will number eternity with the swoop of a sigh, plow eggs until they spout dragon teeth. But your fingertips will always identify my flesh.

Postcards In the parking lot, my brother shoots plastic arrows at our station wagon, sleeping bags piled in the back. "Can we have a pool shaped like a bass guitar," he asks, "when we get to California?" I float gum wrapper boats in the shimmering heat mirage, my knees barnacled with scabs and mosquito bites. As we drive, we count road kills, eighteen wheelers and truck stops named after some guy. You can drink it," Mom says cutting open a barrel cactus. "Even if you get lost, you'll never die." She taped Dad's latest postcard to the dashboard. "Found work. I love you all. Come." We have postcards from almost every state: amarillos from Lou

Prophecy Above the kneeling angel, a sun dangles, a ball of yarn. I want to unravel what they did to me. Mary crosses her arms, an X of blue cotton. They hung her son on an X, cedar planks haphazardly nailed together, no pattern, only what has already happened. I want prophecies, warnings, road signs, a hand that scrawls, their hands deep inside me, claw hammers. Under Mary's blue robes, red cloth drips, the folds gathering into a puzzle on the floor. The painter knew the end, so he shaped the beginning so there could be no other end, no, if only I ....could I?

Wedding "It's my wife and it my life." -- Lou Reed I wore your white shirt, the tails brushing my knees. I fed you pastries stiff with sugar, flacks of icing like rice on our sheets. I twined lilies in my hair, my legs around your back. I tasted almond, rum, myself on your tongue. "Till death do us part." I still wear the ring. How could your death an OD statistic in some LA coroner's file change that vow? You were already dead when you said those words, brown sugar in your veins, the pupils of your eyes shriveling into closed points.

Stories People are gnawed in fairy tales, eyes, tongues pecked, such sweet berries. This is comforting, pain visible. To give someone your heart cut out with a blunt knife much more satisfying then to say "you hurt me". Milky toast, so civilized, we are better they say. When she spoke frogs leapt out, grass green, eyes budging, miniature universes gleaming with the idea of infinity. There is no end. We will tell these stories forever. The mirror told her stories. When she was young, she trembled every time she heard those footsteps. They were always his. The mirror asked for blood, so she cut and cut. And the footsteps went away so why

The Dentist Chair Almost every afternoon, they wrestled and swarmed to be the one to sit in the dentist chair. For whomever sat in the dentist chair was ruler, monarch, benign dictator, the physical manifestation of the will of the people. That was the decree. Jenna and Cindy’s father found the chair in some castoff furniture auction. He dragged it home on a whim and added it to his collection of bar stools, fake maple cabinets and pastel dish strainers. “They may come in useful,” he told his wife surveying the things gathered hodge podge in their back yard. Perched on a battered picnic table, the dentist chair paid court