Stubborn Gray Twist

no, you have it wrong,
it's that, this chimney smokes like my grandma
a welcome site in the cold
the order of her house
best understood
by the cut of the mason,
the weave and true
of the bricks
which stand her up in St Paul winters
and signal the survival
of a burning.

farmhouse rain

 

it came quiet like

a drifter through our opened windows

it played the hair on my arms as i wrote

ran my skin and skipped over my freckles

trying not to trip

on its way up my shoulder

yelling my name like an old best friend

on a grade school playground

it had so much to tell me

Artemis

Artemis hangs her hand off the bed and traces a vine on my wall.  It pries itself from the paper in little spasms and creeps to the ceiling where it flowers.  She buys cigarettes to light and let lie; she says she likes the smell of humans.  A linear callus stretches from the crook in her arm to the bones at her wrist; it is the print of her bow.  There is a hunter in my bed.