To have his lower lip
between her teeth
was enough
her cupped tongue
to birth turtle eggs
nesting themselves
in his throat.
Nothing is
as ugly as hatchlings—
as raw, as needing.
A press of bones,
the intimacy of knuckles in the
caesura of vertebrae. The bird's eye
of the moment of obscurity:
the hurt before pain
hold, hold, hold
before the pecking,
membrane and shell.
The long fingers
of the rainmaker
fisherman in the desert
pause
left ventricle squeezing
the valve slaps.
Legs, arms, teeth—
everything: mouths
of lungfish
gasping
in the wet.
It's not pretty, not pretty.
A Stranger Passing
1.
She wakes, lifts
her head from the pillow
and the dreams fall, settling
into the weave
I’ll make some toast
to sop the yolk
she moves to shake loose
the down woven into her hair
the feathers’ barbs grip
at her roots Tell me
everything
you can remember
2.
Her ankles turning on the cobblestones
a cold wind presses a ghost
into her cochlea, Tommy!
I remember fetching the eggs
the rough beige shell speckled with shit
warm in the palm like a stone
upright like a stone, Tommy
3.
I’ll bake 142 loaves of bread
I’ll knead for 46 days
I’ll grieve for none
She feeds the gulls all winter
they hover over her balcony
insistent and she has not slept
for 46 days
after 46 days feathers fall from the sky
weave themselves into her hair, her cotton shift
heavy, she pulls the hen from its nest
bloody from pairing
Ren Powell is the author of two books of poetry (bilingual editions: Fairy Tales and Soil, 1999; mixed states, 2004. Wigestrand Press) and ten books of translations. Her poetry has been translated and published in several languages, and has appeared in journals such as Segue, Beacons, and Ice Flow. She is the founding editor of Babel Fruit: Writing Under the Influence and protestpoems.org.
