by G.C. WaldrepThe lights come on in the valley below. When did you last believe shutters were for shutting? A domestic penance: these accoutrements, spall and mixed design breaking like ribbons of speech on ribbons of water. Dialect is the truest gift, self speaking self the way the trees did, For we are one yet we are many and we rise. There was a time I could not hear because my ears were stopped with pure honey. I was standing still. At what point do thieves cease to steal our stories, our painted shadows? —Proverb and joke. Carefully I copy the image of empire's currency, abstraction of the leader, abstraction from the mode: thus sex as artifact. Lilith, take heart. I have not let anyone in. Scientists now project the pollen count millennia into the past— If I refuse to remove my hand from the guiding thread it is only because I have not yet pledged allegiance to foreskin, shent villa, sweet crystal psalm.
