A Lady’s Manual
I dreamt I was on a journey in search of a savior (no, a scientist) —
then dusk transported me along the sea
where tiers of light swept the tidewater at my feet, which, like the Light Princess’s, were silk’d
and slipper’d
as if I’d stolen some other woman’s skin — but also a changeling (I had a child with me)
and for miles the last orange sun filtered the pools, the whorls of conch, colloidal fish, anemone,
surf-eaten spines and kelp
and the seashore, also a desert
and together we saw no one, but so much did I require this scientist, or man of learning, I had become a Sympathetic Creature
weightless and wristed in thin lace, not of the sea but having the power to grant sea-wishes by whatever was compelling me
i.e., the wishes of fishers and the liberation of nymphs
and other acts of vanity
with beauty and the mysterious infant as my props, forgetting for an instant the natural world, my human lover and me in the sheets, asleep
when I entered the scientist’s home, in the midst of a celebration, warmed by coppery lamps and stemware, and guests
who toasted his most recent discovery, though little did I understand of physical chemistry — yet instantly
he fell in love, though he kept his love concealed and gave me a room
in which to sleep, because of the child and my evident exhaustion, the sense that I was in some kind of distress due
to the transparency of my skin, pellucid, sea-like
and because I was, suddenly, inspiring rapture
though I knew, too, that I was dangerous, a curse, something about me was deceitful
in the wraith’s disguise, that I had the desire to make him wander, to lose conjecture and thus all reason, propelled
without method in the aftermath, where we set off
through the virgin woods, until all the woods were aflame
and we came to a valley beyond the woods, without knowing what lay on the other side, and the infant had disappeared
and the man of learning, discovering my aspect, met with a terrible fate, and the rest —
the yellow thickets, my vanishing —
you could surmise
the assumption of music and lamentations, the incessant lute. Such were my conditions, to comply with the empire
virtually the whole of my existence, though I was not the singer and nor would I have foreknowledge of the song.
House Flora
Proliferation is abject:
wisps of retriever and cat, the mint-stalks
filched from the garden with wild aster —
as in a spell. The least angle calculates
the fascinum: nos.
of exceedingly small animals,
a spider with six eyes,
the lemon wheel, a pinch of thyme or duckweed
when the tiniest adjustment thrills the scenery,
like snow. To burrow, or conceal one’s body by closing the eyes
(as in hope’s invisibility), e.g.,
the actress on TV wants to be a size zero! gradually
cease to be distinguisha. . .
so my lover loves me for my vanishing nature for my
l air
h air . . .
and on the floor, a vulgar mulch.
Fuck silk and the hand-stitched leaves. The thorns
I’ll gather separately with the hatched egg-cups, blue
with pearl dribble,
to re-build the dispersed arbor:
stirrups of a thin musculature, of vine, the un-
articulated pinnings, a thistle
for the ear’s Chartres, plus a lot of errata. To disburse
is not to disburden, but to lick
the cat’s ear, like this —
descend
into small motherings. And these
are mundane: the waxen ‘o’ of the doctor’s quick thermometer
in and out of my ear (like this), or the needle
nosed in by the quiet phlebotomist.
To relinquish company for the local jargon
when the land springs up.
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