SEVEN POEMS
by Natasha Kessler

THE DREAMING MACHINES CATCH FIRE

Come here in the window through. We cannot sheets under, and a mess of birds. I am in love without love. I recognize your cryptic sex. I am the monster pulling your eyes shut while you sleep. Right on time, the dreaming machines catch fire. I am pieces of moth wings under the bed. I am pieces of white painted walls. I am pieces of baby blood. I am pieces of ravel. I am pieces of red fruit. I am cooling dream cinders. Turn off the light. Please, remove the light from your bone socket. Right on time, the dreaming machines catch fire. See moths in your hair. See moths between my legs falling. We are so small in this small white room. Right on time, the dreaming machines catch fire. On the avenue. I sit on the avenue. Feed the birds. Feed the birds I scream with a mouth full of stones. Right on time, the dreaming machines catch fire. Do you question this yawning machine fire? I don't know this art. This page. Your face. I don't know the difference between coldness and wetness. When I ask this in the mirror, someone says I don't know this art. This page. Your cold, wet face. Right on time, the dreaming machines catch fire. I err on the side of sleep that imitates dying. It is the wrong side you say. You are always on the wrong side you say. O let us die here in our bed aflame.

LOVE WITHOUT FACES
I want something meaning trees,
an old sign and tracks too faint.

The feeding animals.
Outside walls are not walls.

Walls or curious fucking.
Air for the left lung.

Lungs cut from a wolf.
Deeper the rolling skulls.

Wolf between my legs.
The soft parts of rabbits.

Rabbits chased from sleep.
Flowers in a wolf throat.

Room the lost children.
Children hiding under blankets.

Suits of hair and a wolf-mask I wear.
Door the house we once lived.

We have taken nothing,
but nothing using everything.


DISMANTLING THE RABBIT ALTAR
: little dirt mounds and paper birds,
pillows stuffed with hair,
a heavyweight glass between two ribs:

: tiny contortionists under your skin,
I name the rabbits one by one.
Come lie in this grass with me:

: Feed me violins.
Feed me foxes and tiny wolves,
rabbits with new names:

: Come lie in this grass with me.
Watch the children yawn
and turn their bodies into rain:

: I am not a symbol for your undressing.
Just a little sad head on the floor:

Look here.          A rucksack of used wigs.

Look here.          A bottle of burning birds.

Look here.          We can't stop all this breathing.


OUR NEW WOLF HEADS WANDER

Your hollowed voice, a pendulum in this room. A gunnysack full of moth wings. We don't have mothers, but we still hide things from them. Tether under our breathing ribs. Paperly in our new skin. Mouths open. Mouths full of moth dust. And the swinging in this room. I would kill you just to remember you.

OUR NEW WOLF HEADS
We are visible and invisible.
We are invisible, visible.

The map in our old-selves
won't tell us directions.

The people replace our names
with wolf heads.

When the children ask,
mothers say Deep-in-the-forest-there-lives.


TONIGHT I'M BURNING PAPER BIRDS

Tonight I'm burning paper birds or looking for an ocean in the shade or eating your collection of silence. I am the girl with a heart on her throat. More like smoked sparrow in a can. Think of me when you find bloody rabbits. Tell me again how it is that we breathe. No one remembers why this alley's painted ash. Painted feathers. I make you into a door then chase you through it.

DON'T LEAN ON YOUR BONES

When you are prettyenough, the people in town will rename it after you. Spend your days moving up & down the streets, saying see my prettytwirl-prettytwirl. Cut the thread between your lips to speak. Nothing dead stays dead for long. No one plans to rescue you and your mother is dying again. A horse is in the woods.