IN THE WITCH ELM
i dream of bleeding & of being swallowed / whole, this body / all its requisite parts / whole, how i hide myself from view / & THE LORD SAID / blessed be the girls who let nothing in
/ i dream a
straight line slicing / through Appalachia / all the spooked horses lick sugar from my palm / at night
i pine for sleep / the way hunger howls a plea from its own pit / a prayer roiling somewhere dark &
hollow / all i want is the placid lake / some black oblivion / inside the witch elm, a woman’s body /
wedged in her throat, the green scarf
/ i dream of loving with the precision of a traced object / the
lifeless girls, the subject / the subject, all the things i keep quiet / how last night i dreamed her dead
again / the blinding green / how the night before / i dreamed a body in a bathroom stall / a boy
shot to death in a classroom
/ still i dream myself bloodied / my body swallowed / my body grass-stained & longing for the treeline / to reveal something green / a savior / something growing /
whole, inside me / what happens to the shape of the girl / she’s eighteen / long-limbed & oaring
across a cumberland lake / my body, the quiet grave / it’s the difference between drowning &
burning
TYPO
30
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