“Ritual is as Ritual Does” & “She Burns the Moon”
Ritual is as Ritual Does
to be inside the head of a cloudhead
the (unending but not infinite) luxury of having
aches acres to keep
up after
even in winter the grass threatening to take over
, banana
spiders webbing trees into remembering ::
the razor the water the letter the cellos inside the rope’s fiber
instruments of a self-
(unfinished)…
once but not
as a compliment She was called a buxom-blue-
eyed-she-devil & truth
be told it was
the she-devil
making Her
blush as if She’d just won a hot-
dog eating contest & first prize was a wet-eyed belled chamois
it was like snow falling on the Antarctic sea
She could wipe
the counter & not two moments later a smudge
of cuttlefish a spill of daffodil some crumbs
like the center of gravity She felt haunted
until She realized She was
the ghost; then it was afternoon cups
of ginger-infused, anti-
climactic tea
while the world outside burned
& froze, rose & sunk
cyclic, gyre, Plink-O, contronymed with other
matters of the heart
She Burns the Moon
Incense outside because otherwise
it stinks like soap
but in the air
the open air
of outside it’s a still-
life a dragon-smear of an orchid-like
flower a ghastly gorgeous grey-washed periwinkle
jarring up against a bloodswirl of candy-headed
hips—not her hips but those
of
the overwrought
roses—do they still
move you—the roses the roses the roses ?
what She believes is a bat has just kited
across the yard the length it takes a bride
to walk the bridge to the aisle
in the trees
clump the wisteria jewel-like
now the soft clamber of the wind
chimes as disturbed evening
descends into pond
She’s hot as velvet
when it rains
,, it s-
pores it queefs frogsong
