wyrdwind

Footnotes

She found him in a wreck

or was it washed up on rocks?

Nobody of nowhere, naught

but to be hers. What tempests

deliver, chances. No stranger

to risk, this chieftain of ships.

Happiness from a far flung place,

held fast in the face of other plans.

Slain by a lesser contemporary—

not even her nation’s mortal enemy—

and women, we don’t owe anything

to anybody.

She marked her tragedy

with several bodies. History

records these. The ocean

plays for keeps.

She held plural, actually,

I think you know of whom I speak.

Two husbands and seven children down,

the toll on a woman not afforded a crown.

The longer you live the muddier your choices,

perhaps made simpler because she lost him.

No Kings, No Masters

Always the best lines

for villains. Mind

who’s doin’ the writin’.

This witch said love

is what they give girls

to play with

instead of power. Admit,

she’s not wrong though.

Thing is, we’re the source

of both. What we’re owed.

No one sits upon that throne,

because a woman’s work is never done.

Our seat is empty but not open,

least of all for an ungrateful son.

Nothin’ good comes

forgettin’ where you came from.

Whose bed you warm.

This notion of The One

necessitates equal ground,

and that’s tricky.

Any creature of complexity or

eccentricity begs a particular

shape of mate. Honesty.

Faith in an endgame

worth the wait.

For whom you need not

translate.

Ubuntu means

I cannot be human

until you reflect my humanity

back at me.

If you met the Goddess today,

what would she see?

Conquerable Characters

There’s four pillars to a good time:

food, fightin’, fuckin’, and friendship.

Foundation of every house ever built.

Don’t matter how you dress it up.

I wanna hunt and kill the kobold horde,

then I wanna woo the forlorn lord,

he’s a widower. Kobolds, remember.

Come here baby, I’ll make it better.

Then I’m gonna go to the tavern

and make a bunch of friends there,

or knuckles up again,

the night is young.

I’ll go home, arms full

with whatever’s good I’ve found

and he’s still in his study

with a wrinkled shirt and that

little frown.

Forgets to eat if I’m not around.

I know what to do with that mouth.

Here’s where most people say,

I’m just too manly, how

could any of these poor boys compete,

as if it ain’t law you don’t ask for a softie

unless you give Grace O’Malley.

Unseen

The female of a species

hides in plain sight.

She is much, much bigger

on the inside.

You wouldn’t realize.

Density is the very mechanism

of Time. What breaks you

is what allows you a life.

Preachin’ immortality

is an unforgivable slight.

A galaxy’s choreography,

every orchestra chair in its symphony,

spins the whims of a singularity

only visible via debris.

My high notes nurse nebulous,

my low notes swing on Tartarus,

talkin’ is tirin’ when you’re all chest,

surrounded by flutter, twitter, and soar,

and I stab at those like…

lipstick on an alligator.

Defyin’ drought one swamp paw

after the other, a solitary reservoir

of words.

Event Horizon

Grit jammed my playlist

for twenty years.

If it was too soft, slow, or folksy

it sailed past these ears.

This heart needed tempo

to keep me alive.

A birth defect internalized.

You march on the stomach,

won’t fill it with sad—

well, a workin’ class woman in hell can’t—

fuck it up with a bassline, drop

real low, hit me

with a death growl. Spill

siren song over shrapnel.

Tectonic technical.

Maybe someday somethin’

sweet enough to put this knife down.

A lullaby long and sensual.

The best sleep I’ve ever known

was a piece by my estranged brother,

eyes closed in a palette of embers.

Defrag

When you’re a ghost in the walls

linin’ the chambers of others’

TV lobotomies

you hear things.

Happen past your reflection and think,

oh that’s my body

in a warped door frame. Who is she?

Been clutchin’ a telephone string

all these nights askin’ why, why,

hopin’ for someone at the end of the line,

and maybe they’ve tied theirs up in knots,

but I’ve a firm grasp on mine.

I can’t relate to any of ’em,

their clumsy digits like toddlers

on a xylophone. I parse data,

finest fleece from a sea of wrong sounds,

in the weavin’ I become. A spider

doesn’t think herself an architect.

She is the web.

So it holds,

however she is, is how she’s meant,

and if she suffers her story to be told,

then someone must need to hear it.

X

Liftin’ a curse

ain’t just about lockin’ lips.

It’s how we got here, hurt

informs medicine. Receptive

roots must recognize

my breath.

An invitation,

the invocation of The Kiss.

What power it has

is the power you give. Magic

is the space between belief

and what exists. The artist

whose gaze you see yourself in.

A temporal flash at the end,

I pull this thread in my hand,

inverse unravelin’

until there’s a direct line

from you to me.

Suddenly

you can look back

at all the places pain

shaped you and find

my love instead.