I look at my husband with crazy
eyes he says—but I know he doesn’t
mean to disarm me. He doesn’t want it
to feel like an attack—usually, after sex,
when I feel most woman, I guess, if you had to
put a gender to it, like one does in botany—
distinct parts but not one playing a role. Anyway,
a triumph how the heart eventually trusts, how I could

come again to the bluff as a wild horse
told to climb a rock-face, iris-crazy eyes
and all, having rolled back on fetlocks because
the rider’s heart and its heart beat, for a moment,
at the same pace having accepted it could transpire—
all lost in the loose fumble of reins and earth, still
they go because they arrived at the bluff
and they made a pact to keep going.

I’m different now. I braid my hair
To the side. Your hand, praying
in the pocket of my yellow coat, sets a field
on fire in a dream.  I look for your body in the train

conductor, taking my ticket. My gods are different
now. Angry, they listen, ghost, the way pain
bends, separates body from need—
I forgot what man looked like, frightened,
waiting to split wood apart,
find me.

*

I pick round bellies, think of teeth. The horrors gods will say
in my ear— The net gathers here, you say,
point to my neck. Is that so? I say, buttoning the doorframe
after you leave. Ghost-herds paw the green. I place
three cherries in a bowl.

*

On a line in blue, a yellow coat hoards a child’s doll
in its pocket. I’m angry, different,
a cavern everyone’s scared to open.

*

Carrying cherries in the teeth of the once dead is difficult.
The last time I read the gospels, an oak opened in me—
I felt cutting through the windowsill a body peeling
from fields of skin. It said, Let