smell like Ginger Gold apples. For hours,

I’ve been looking out the window—staring

into the hallway we took to my bedroom. I know

the sky is a blue wall. I know the walls

were sky blue. Memory paints them yellow.

I’ll keep this revision. The rest I’ve thrown away.

Head on Ice #5

after Lorna Simpson

She’s cold as a snake

She’ll cut you

She was dreaming

Her face had been cut out of a magazine

Of ice formations

The color of sapphire

She wasn’t cut out to be a housewife

She undressed in the middle of the night

She wasn’t cut out to be a soccer mom

She was hot

And kicked off he covers

She saw him disappear by the river

She peeled the apple skin

Into one long ribbon

Until she lay naked

In the grass

She wasn’t cut out to be a den mother

Her hands were cold

Only to discount her memory

She’s cold-hearted

She’d always wanted ice sculptures

At her wedding

They asked her to tell

What happened

Of swans

Her hands were carved from ice

They asked her to tell what happened

Only to discount

Her memory

At least

He didn’t

Cut her face

She wore a sapphire ring

Because

You know

All that trouble with diamonds

The jeweler spoke of a classic cut

She was cold-blooded

Memory fell like a bang

Over her eye

She was streaked with melting

On her head

She wore a glacier

Drifting

Like a wig

After a Year of Forgetting

Now I will learn how to tie an apron and unclasp

my bra from behind. I will become hard,

like a moss-covered rock. I’ll be stiff s a nightgown

dried on the line. When the pond freezes over, I’ll walk

to its center and lie face up until it is May

and I am fl ating. I’ll become an anchor

pitched skyward. I will steer chiseled ships,

spinning fortune’s splintered wheel. I will worry

over damp stones. I will clean ash

from the Madonna’s cheek using the wet

rag of my tongue. I’ll make myself shrine-like

and porcelain; I will stand still as a broken clock.

I will be sore from lovemaking. I will become so large,

my hair, loosened, will be mistaken for the swallow’s cave.

After June, there is a year of forgetting, after the forgetting,

antlers adorn the parlor walls. Then it snows, and I’ll be

coarse. I’ll be soft as my mother’s teeth. I’ll be sugar crystals

and feathery snow. I’ll be fine. I will melt.

I will make children from office paper. They’ll be cut

from my stomach wearing blank faces. Bald

and silent, they will come out of me: triplicates

holding hands. I will smooth their foreheads

with a cool iron. I will fold the tepid laundry, turn down

the sheets, then sleepwalk along the Mississippi