selections from & CRUEL RED
Otoliths, 2010
by Mary Kasimor
– ix –
my sister is swaddled in
the grass
I ventured out held down
the milky
way & ran aground
to the surface I consciously met
her on the midwest ice
conscience
compensating for
too little self too many sisters
the flattened path was suspicions
the placed
path exhumed a rabbit’s foot a
stellar
direction back out my
sister blue
directed me to the other patch
of land put up the tents
feasted on ditch grass burned
the fingerprint my other
sister said
the end is never coming (a
deprivation of
kin) I slit my wrists a ruby
obsession
a small picture of similar deaths
in the desert my sister
knows
the outside of my eyes my sister does not
know the other side of poetry
my sister swallows glass
– xxii –
what I want is not without tension, teeth
leaving
bite marks we are no longer found
in tapestries with gaping souls, the loss
of blood. those minerals float to the surface &
I
become Mozart (s)plashing in the water Sappho
tearing
off wings Aristotle escaping with self. he
meant that
self government was a dream on the
internet.
you write in my facebook: when mexico
was good, before people melted away
defined as a state
of mind. I wore my tire soled sandals the soul of
the people
came from fluorescent lights, incense to the
people.
our blood does not explain why, we are
floating. loss
held in arms the space between safety grazing
your love fights for dominance. an
unarmed
country, I am delivered in a box pieces of
icicles
bloody ashes. more disputes flew over money
carved boundaries. the faces left on the
mountains songs
captured in caves bodies never
recovered. from
the suburbs, refrigerators of stainless
steel.
– xxix –
the sharp thrust of tentacles
of sister’s spear
the sky no one owns (the father) unlike the
species
listens softly when a tree approaches the stars
those encrusted with cold
moths the spiders
suck off the liquid skin
the father carries
keys in his throat
dawn cleverly hides the hills
softly rounded no one
knows who they are
crawling into themselves the wind falls
off the edge it is not a truthful
moment nor
a minute to spare
we buy hats with birds nesting
in the brims our father met us empty handed &
blind from birth
perfect blood the husband begot
the brain a brilliant flash of pain
then he was gone
the sisters displayed themselves wearing tartan plaid
& velvet veils the lyre chained to the air
unstrung
the string unwound the cloth
freed us from the past
fallen we fell another bruise the
dirt flew free
transparency
made the ocean
– xxxiv –
& north dakota
joy among the voices, over slices of
oranges the juice of the sun. texas
squeezed. the underbelly, the fly’s
wing under the microscope. hum.
distracted from tedium working
through happiness. a made the fire,
b fell through. the roof c wore
green. shoes stitched with guitar. strings
the grand canyon the pacific ocean & north
dakota rivers smile. vanilla over the falls
fallen like a lemon fizzy bomb polka
dots, conjoined at each curve of air.
