WINNOW

Blame the starfish, its triangle losses

            and gains. How fancy to lose an arm

these days. To let what’s unwhole become whole

            and back again. This is called swinging.

Last night, I dreamt I was a lobster.

            One-clawed and hardly. You, a four-sided

constellation of the sea. What choices we had:

            to complete ourselves, ourself.

Imagining our broken off parts in some marriage

            of their own. By morning, I know better.

We are not fancy. We must stick to the one wholeness

            we know: to let what is missing, stay

missing. And Swing?                         No

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POEM FOR MY RIBS

Un- sticky but grasped around me
like a wrapped squid and hard hard
hardly a building. But such architecture
and arch and texture. I know what you’re
thinking: this is beautiful, oddly.

Dear bone cage dear hard corset,
I've counted you up and down,
twelve twins and measures. No,
this is odd, beautifully. It’s all bone
play and octaves, a dozen pair
of reaching arms.

Dear birdcage dear dirty corset,
inside you is a chair where no one
sits. Make me love this chair, love
the things I cannot see: my xylophone,
fishtail, musical bars and scales. A ladder              
to all things so true and false and floating.

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"Winnow" began as a fascination in regeneration: the ability of a living thing to re-grow lost or broken parts of itself, as well as a fascination with humans and their obsession with completeness.

"Poem for my Ribs" is a meditation on the physical structure of the ribcage. Beautiful or odd. You decide.