Turn Us into Ashes

Turn us into ashes and sycamore
in bold stroke and mentor of your fire
so that I can sing across days fitful and plain
like you would
my letters to the dead and ranting.

Will I Marry

Bracing that child against a wall
inlaid with whelk still chaste
I fashion our mourning in brittle light
rank with disfigurement and truce
an envoy
peculiar to the grimace of anyone’s daughter.

9am on the Dot Clock

Fixed in urgency and tumbling on the wink of volumes proffered
I escaped momentarily under suede elbows
inside patches across my eyes
pending interrogation in the shudder of my skin
upright against the dashboard
clock ticking in the dark.

Tooth of a Black Tiny Bird

Wedged like a nickel under my plate,
I vanished into quiet winter for the night
and held myself apart from all that mattered
the air duly rocking its small hands
over acres born of rare and tensile breed
a brilliance
greater than the road to Philadelphia.

If My Church Be Bone

If my church be bone
then splinter still that empty room
and come the pitches
to that finer home.

I Scraped the Bow
and found myself lacking,
gutted by exhaustive pleading
and draped in brocade of a more
malicious type, a ladybird chanting
on the lips of newborns bald and
lucid her strung pearls.

c2003 Laura Siersema