What dreams, inside this chamber, remain encased?

The skull, though fragile seeming, will not break.

C11: Female, 54 Years Old

C11: FEMALE, 54 YEARS OLD

Once my throat-silts split the dark. My womb

opened, blowflies swarmed the hollow of my gut,

my pelvis flowering to a cradle of rabbitbrush.

Hills nuzzled my knees. I heard the moan

of passing cars, felt fires flame up, towers

be razed for my headstone. Had I remained, over

how much more might I reign, my shoulder cuffs

the field’s parentheses, breasts pooling to freshets?

Was it envy that made you recollect me, peel off

my earthworm crown, my negligee of roots?

Your spade edge struck my slab face that time

perfected, and I was hauled up, tagged, numbered.

Rock-maw, cave of unmined amethysts, your

Helen of the Shadows. My schist hide masks my glitters.

Portrait of B4: Female, 34 Years Old

PORTRAIT OF B4: FEMALE, 34 YEARS OLD

I’d cradle this if I could, a lover’s head laid

to my breast: the ossicles’ seismic cursives a map

of madness—heritable grief. Our flesh-chaff’s

its own elegy, monument. The cells of my cousin

circle in my blood, as some part of our uncle

slipped down with him into the cool submarine air

to peer into a target’s sonar flare.

I long to put them back into the dark,

let them grow new teeth, new skin, return

to what they were or could have been. It’s hurt

that moves me most in men. This one, too,

I’d slip inside: never to be woken, wounded;

to dream of nothing, as nothing more by her

must ever be borne.

Portrait of C8: Male, 32 Years Old

PORTRAIT OF C8: MALE, 32 YEARS OLD

Chert nubbin. Moraine of space. Cranium

honeycombed with bubbles of anemia—

So slight it seems you couldn’t contain

a thing electrifying as thought. Why keep

a skull? Unless to remind ourselves of that zero

animating flesh: material evidence

we each are half a ghost. If there were a bone

for love, or fear, or pain, this calcite loam

comes closest to one. Through you, I’m drawn

deep into the emptiness that you’ve encased,

one more fleck of dark added to the negation

that is most truly us: what’s left the face

of everything to be undone. You: gray,

freckled, weightless. Closer to me than a cousin—

V

V

Baucis and Philemon

BAUCIS AND PHILEMON

That there was a story of a girl

who changed into a tree to save herself

from love, the woman now recalls,

standing in the doorway of her guest

bedroom, staring at her son. It’s Friday,

late afternoon: the time during which

their son usually appeared, hair

stuck in greasy feathers to his scalp,

leaving a trail of small and large

things missing behind him: a silver

saltshaker, a laptop tablet, so that even now

her husband’s mouth hardens

whenever their son’s name is mentioned.

Though it’s been years since these appearances.