*
How
from out the cardinal's throat
come the contours of
paradise
enunciated
but unconsummated
In that fire in that awakening
you too will be
a memory come alive
Scarlet in the wires of forsythia
the cardinal is itself
a tatter
of the inner lining of nothingness
where it awaits us
as scripture no longer scripture
no longer what
in the process of appearing
still does not appear
Suzanne Paola
Borderlands: Infertility
I should have known you wouldn't come here,
where hemlocks point out where the wind goes,
&
the sea never stops,
its slap candid as doctor's to infant,
its flood salt
&
menstrual.
Tell me what keeps you off–
windsound in a gull's throat,
the mad milk ofwhitecaps, or the trains,
