from experience—Ecclesiastes. Help me understand, help me reverse

the pilgrims’ stories. Make them rise up out of their bone crypts

doubled with purpose—bloodied, believing—& send them to war

for their girl queens. War for their daughters hallelujah

as it wasn’t in the beginning isn’t now & never shall be

world without end. Oh but God my God Amen.

[IT WASN’T ABOUT LOVE]

It wasn’t about love    I was giving a speech

I was saying This is about violence

Get over love, sure                Bright landscape

It was a house that fell down                 I fell toward myself

I couldn’t see myself at the bottom I woke up on the dirt floor of the old cellar I had new limbs

New inadequate gestures of suffering    Chimeric thing

Blurred reaching    wings out

pelican mouth            unfull but full of loathing

Would you describe that sound as wailing?

I was speaking            I said I never want to survive that story again

It was explained to me that I was in danger

Someone was listening

If you say X then we’ll have to tell someone

I was speaking I didn’t say X

I said yes to a bottle I said yes

to the rope of my own hands

to a body to a body

I was only        I was only

A body alone with its own blood            blue

in its skin-tape

ELEGY WITH SYMPTOMS

Under cover of darkness, I consider the alternatives. High water. Firing squad. Infirmary. I’m angry with you for leaving me no particular method. Please note I am not giving up yet on the cliff road. What happens to a woman at 19 at 25 at 29 can make her vulnerable to flight. First the tripwires drop away from my fingers. Next I’m learning the names for the parts of a bell. Eggs crack. A chalk line darts up my arm. Here I am as a hairpin curve. Here I am as cyanide stowed away in an apple seed. I am looking for lost arrows. Girl tribes of the hinterland. For scales to fall away from the eyes of anything, anything. Please. I have learned the way rain rots thick in a barrel. Given the relevant texts, I am dangerous. Around me, black bats dive up in the dark. I’ve been wrong, I’ve been trying to pry off the planks from these windows. I am keeping the box that I came in. I am keeping my wrong blood—look at it vine through my wrist like a brand.

INDICTMENT

Didn’t I tell you & didn’t I tell you Emily

not to fight for the gospel of error

not to row out as far as the river goes

not to raise up your arms like a waxwing bird

like you’re free, like you’re everything

falling? You fall like it’s your fault,

like you know how to breathe

under milfoil & reeds. You look

like you’re already drowning