CONJURE WIVES

I created a method
by which to compare
two separate women.

One was designated
by the numerals 0, 8, and 6.
The other by 5, 7, and 3.

One was given the moon
the other, the sun.
One's eye was shut,
the other's, open.

One by the letters S, X, and Z.
And the other one L, M, and A.

A cherry and a blood drop
lay in one's hand,
a cigarette and a teardrop
in the other's.

YESTERSTORY

So it came to be
that nothing mattered to the wind
and it ceased blowing angrily around things
such as when it howled around houses

Such as when people around tables
brought the food to their mouths
with slower deliberation

as if to make certain
the wind would not hear
and take offense

as if it mattered to the wind

ALL THE DREAMS OF BLACK AND WHITE

All the Dreams of White and Black
in rings surround each other;
consecutively triumphing,
each one will strain to reign.

Unaware the Coil they spin
one end loops to the other
completing triumphantly
a God-ring, gray, to stay.

EARLY MORNING

the mountain's outline

a heap of sleeping faces

dreaming about us

MAD DOG

Once was a dog there. He was.
Oh he grinned. Happy dog.

But he knew
something commanded.

Once a moon there is,
it attracts water.

He lolled away from it.
In his madness,

he came to loathe the sea
and what it contained.

It is easy to see how
he shied from that huge stomach

and the slow bloat of its crest
during night. The dog had no name

and he roamed across the land like a whitecap
leaving prints that would fade in slowmelt

trailing behind him—the signature
of a wraith, erased by dawn's arrival.

No one knew where he came from
or what he was doing