she sweeps the courtyard   clear   of voices

beggar in her throat
digging
to disturb the night

she mutinies to wipe the wind
from her sacrosanct eyes

cancels
the silent broadcast

she paints sunflower dust
across her blue lips

sea of nights on her tongue
mileposts to mark the sinking    raw notes
                                 scrawled
                                 on her wall

her piling footsteps

her unplanted grain
dissembling the wind

 

she conforms her hands
to chains

catches her breath
beginning with the water lie

her foot
falls
to the stool        and the unscratched lens
                    stalls on her forehead

 

restless
she slips
to the dirt

night sifter
she seals the aromas          of the praying dead

their breath in black outline
weaves
the stillness on her breast to the wind

buried beneath the elm
her unbridled voice
rings the dark around her fingers

her retrieved nights open her lips
disclose fires       speeding through the breathless
                     night

tongues of the dead on her white bed
lay their fractured
heads

swift witnesses to her bloodied
birth
pour onto her living room floor

on the plank of desire
she surfaces again

accident of
compassion

her profane palms   her tongue
that pleases the wind

 

she is
the circus of time    deafness on her severed
                      lips

her season
weeping out the morning

her arms
floating from her bridge

her sunflower dust
dripping
into her heathen eyes

hanging night off her sleeve
she is covered with her
red
blanket

loosens
her skin

she is small
on the winds        and bleeds her wing
                    to silence

leaning against her thigh
her severed head composes the prayer

echo of eyes
amassed
for redemption:   hide me
                  when I die