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Excerpt from
"Incantations Of The Grinning Dream Woman" (title poem) :
Once my days hung in limbo,
catapulted toward some incomprehensible end.
In the yellow
peeling wallpaper
I saw faces of hitch hikers.
Then one morning
I left,
and someone else took my bed.
I had to fit
my back against the hollow of a rock.
At first I
tiptoed without a compass,
relied on the smell of damp earth,
the rough feel of bark.
I followed
a string of unlit bulbs across
the continent, turned the lights on as I walked.
I was your
grinning dream woman,
wandering from tree to tree.
Each mile was another year passing.
In winter
the blacktop highway contracted, froze.
In fall the leaves dropped quickly.
When I looked back they were gone.
(excerpted
from title poem)
How Does
the Wind Wail?
Like mamas
whose children wander homeless
in the universe.
Like a child
alone.
How does the
wind wail?
Down the walls
of monolith skyscrapers.
Alone.
Where does
the wind travel?
Over blue
pine hollows,
hapless regions of desolate oak,
across a Joshua
tree in the desert,
arms raised in prayer.
How will I
know
the wind's nearby?
When the last
guest leaves the party
and the door slams shut.
Who'll put
the wind to sleep?
Will it sleep in my arms?
Who will be
my love
when the wind sleeps in my arms?
And what does
the wind want from me?
What does it want?
It wants my
body.
Wants my heart.
It tugs on
my shirt
as I comb my hair.
I turn around
and there's nothing there.
It circles
my fingers,
tickles my spine,
skips over
synapses,
steals my thoughts.
When I wrestle
in sleep,
I wrestle wind.
When nothing
else speaks
there's still
the wind.
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