A dead wasp is staining a corner of the studio apartment with warning stripes.

our passports remain unstamped a crooked road thicket and tangle tongue unsalted eye

A surgery is an act, an event, bounded by time, but the surgeries in me are time-travelers.

my body changes at the county line learns to stride the scissors across linen as wide as my walk

hands calloused with the labor of buttercup squash, citations, native shrubs. hands desperate to turn soft again.

who’s bodily cravings in the things the body has to say will not seem to pulse in the ordinary way.

I am mapping the darkness of my psyche, illuminating areas and eliminating fear.

a girl grows up in a barn-door house on her knees for God’s mercy; the only one she meets is her mother’s

i dig for some part yet undiscovered, some part of me that tells me who i am.

my skin displayed in pale, unseemly glory. here, a butterfly pinned to cork with powdered wings

Folds, layers, depths to which I dared not bring myself closer

white-coated Executioner informs me, your time is running out

the divinity of movements like resistance in the alcove of two lonely shoulder blades

broken glass being brought up by two sets of loving hands whose owners are never not hollering

And that made me angry. So I was the one who pounced.

If I have a soul, I think that it is the puppeteer to my marionette.