Cleverer Tricks than Spinning Straw into Gold

I could pull words out of this moonlight
that would make your throat clench with fire,
set your feet to dancing
and your eyes to wandering.
I know the words to yank kings from thrones,
to burst the rivers from their banks
and unleash the wind.

One syllable from my skipping tongue
set the cows into the corn
so that the farmer’s boy threw up his hands
and ran away to the city,
where a young girl twisted taffy
and watched the door for someone
who smelled like hay and ripe plums
and wasn’t yet stained with smoke.

I shouted nonsense into the dark,
to remind even the stars to be afraid,
and cawed insults at the birds
so they flew into each other.
A riddle at the crossroads,
jokes thrown at the wrong time—
power vibrated around each vowel
and thudded in my consonants.

The world tumbled against my voice;
I sang each morning and broke apart the dawn.
Luck danced with a limp behind me.
Fortune and Fate hid in the alleys
mumbling and weeping over featureless palms
as I stole their prophecy for nursery rhymes.
I wandered with mischief on my mind,
spoke chaos into the world,
and no corner held quiet.

I could pull such words out of this moonlight!
And I admit that I am tempted;
it would be something truly powerful
to stir your heart to trouble,
something out of the ordinary
to take you from mundane to magical,
from tame to tempestuous.
I miss the travel, my independence.

But I love you,
and my knees are sore in this cold,
and there is bread rising in the kitchen,
so instead I spin the moonlight
into the thick whisper you love most,
teasing words and laughing syllables,
and, eventually. . . silence.

Never Immaterial

If you build women out of wicker,
entwining their woven heads with oak,
their lips soft with poison ivy,
eyes stained by crushed blackberry,
why are you surprised to watch them wither in winter,
their fat, braided bodies shrinking to skeleton?
They need sap to keep them warm.

If you build women out of glass,
fitting shards into a glittering whole,
their breasts mismatched bowls,
expressions only as their cloudy flaws,
why are you surprised when they slash and are smashed,
their feet breaking off each time they dance?
They need space to keep brittle, not broken.

If you build women out of cloth,
stitching seams stuffed with sawdust,
their hair hanks of rough yarn,
skin dyed in streaky patches that clash wildly,
why are you surprised when they droop and flop,
slithering to the floor before you can purse your lips?
They need bones to stand on their own.

If you are building women at all,
why are you surprised to fail?
They need to see love before they can give it.

The Songs You Forget When You Wake Up

I have gone back to sleep, looking for the dream I left behind. There was a wall rising into a faded sky while the trees looked on. . .

Asleep, I live in the sweet poeticism that I can only brush with my fingertips while awake. My brain fills with the vista of someone’s imagination, a canyon that opens up to a navy sky full of constellations I’ll never know. A girl, long beyond weeping, turns her back to a thoughtless group, her task both abhorrent and necessary. . .

Even the nightmares are grand and complicated, as I am chased through a glass house that tilts from its uneasy perch on a mountain-spire. The land below is quilted green and orange and I could walk on the sky if I turned the right way. . .

It is a cruel and delicate cobweb. I cling to the few images that remain, but my desperate clutch pokes holes and dents their corners until only shreds are left, stained with my conscious thoughts. Tied hands . . . a tattered ghost. . . a bottle labeled with an ever-shifting name. . .

And water, always water.

I am grateful that I have enough glory in me to assemble my dreams, but oh! It aches when they slip away and I am left staring at the same white ceiling, huddled under the same plaid blanket, living the life that is unable to be as amazing as they told me when I was a child. I want—I want—

I don’t know what I want. I’ve never dreamt of it.