from Keep, signs

And so, in my dream, might not the girl have been hurriedly gathering the shards of her own fall?
Yasunari Kawabata


youre the boyfriend of the sister. youre the sister. both in a bedroom. bare save the heart-shaped bed with
red satin or silk spread shaped also like a heart. someone approaches, jabs syringe into your thigh. a jester
figure appears appended to podium feet from the bed. legs riveted to base. figure in brightly colored
clothing: half theater, half clown. pointed hat flickering a checkered black and white, the jester faces the
scene. in the bed, you are the boyfriend who leans in to kiss the drugged girl. morning you are the girl.
entering the kitchen, you find your brother; he stares. scattered on all kitchen surfaces are small scraps of
paper all with one word handwritten. your brother turns to you and says: everything is personal.
*
holographic venomous green snake with red bands curls past your brother commands be still each sense a
lens refocusing wave patterns a context swirls when lens is moved away wave interferences form
holographic patterns synaptic southern river's shore sister snake half coiled shallow water circuits despite
how still bites modular a cluster of neurons computes evening water senses motor functions bundles of cat
tails assemblies of modules the family gathers cellular the snakebite |the leg hours in waiting room,
poisonedno known means by which tissues other than the brain are capable of memory storage but
morning your leg aches
Deborah Poe is the author of the poetry collections the last will be stone, too (Stockport
Flats), Elements (Stockport Flats), and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords), as well as a
novella in verse, Hlne (Furniture Press). She has published several chapbooks, most
recently Keep (above/ground press). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in
Jacket2, Fact-Simile Magazine, Court Green, and Coconut. For more, please visit deborahpoe.com.