kiki petrosino
i married a horseman
for his straight jaw & dark jackets.
For he gave me his ring to wear as a cinch.
My markings, he called faint star, white boot & drew a line of rain
down the side of my cheek. I married him for the silence in his speech, for
his black kerchief. All the time he drew & in this drawing, we married.
Now I live in the timber scent & tall smoke of his shadow. Evenings, he returns
to me from his work, with his fine coat haltered in frost. This house
has no doors. We pass each other crossing our necks in Hello.
ghosts
Some ghosts are my mothers
neither angry nor kind
their hair blooming from silk kerchiefs.
Not queens, but ghosts
who hum down the hall on their curved fins
sad as seahorses.
Not all ghosts are mothers.
I've counted them as I walk the beach.
Some are herons wearing the moonrise like lace.
Not lonely, but ghostly.
They stalk the low tidepools, flexing
their brassy beaks, their eyes.
But that isn't all.
Some of my ghosts are planets.
Not bright. Not young.
Spiraling deep in the dusk of my body
as saucers or moons
pleased with their belts of colored dust
& hailing no others.
nursery
We opened the door to the fairy house & took our tea on matching pebble seats. Somehow we got out of there alive
though something crystalline of us remains in that dark, growing its facets. We opened the door to the fairy house
at the oak's black ankle. You asked What could happen? as you disappeared somehow. We got out of there alive
the strange tea still warm in our bellies. Inside, our hosts gave damn few answers. Who built that door? Is this a fairy house?
They had no faces yet. We spoke into their quince-bud ears. You wept. Somehow we got out of there alive
though we didn't quite return. Our life is different now we've drunk the tea. They're alive somehow. I got us out. Why did you open the door to the fairy house?