low red door I enter in
the desert slaked by rain
in this a kind of format
an interstice a splice
between the sad time
and the next sad time
there was a voice that led me waste yourself
to bone gouge a barren canyon in your eye
among the shattered columns
of white astonished salt
the quenchless white horizon
above the starving-ground
I stoop to enter doorframe
weathered marked with blood
within a kind of corridor
a passageway a shunt
to lead me toward
a broken alibi
*
(what watches from the margin
your belly-knot an oval
I the zero infant
zone of wish
derivative already
compounding I accrue
in insequential snippets
accumulate your mother’s
hated face I helical
and writhing you eager
to forget the weeks
of tattered weather
what the snow gathered up in its hands—
*
according to a template compounding
I accrue
bit-torrent cryptographic hash
#humandownload #mydomain
infernal code transcription
infernal code transpose
error there is error
no mistake
*
inside the perfect ferment
of my encircled dark
I am a fern unfurling to myself
the mallet of a fist an eye
mere furrow in the fine down of my face
I am a pure acoustic ear a larva or a snail
perhaps I am a seahorse kicking
with my body toward the light—
I am all pulse and membrane
I do not know I am
tethered to the human to the body
its intent I do not know
my immanent address among the crooked objects
the dresser and the mirror
the struggle of the narrative the strangle
of the name and who am I
to monster forth from embryonic pool
that you will make
but will not mother me)
*
inside the arid cavern a woman
carved from salt her face a pox
of crystal her torso, twisted
gyrates toward the door I touch her
with my ragged hands I lick
her unclean skin remove
the single votive from my bag
I crouch to strike the matchhead
set the flame to juniper and rue
far off, a drop of water perspires
through the rock my singular
petition Sister
may I never bear
*
(what watches from the margin:
compounding I amass
relentless in the doublecloth
of night I thread
my vessels wind
my bones in this mitosis
I inspool myself
as outside on lattice the slipstich
of wisteria twines from left
to right its hook and I
incessant a day’s amalgamed blossom
we burgeon we exceed—)
*
את אלהים ברא בראשית את אלהים ברא בראשית
Bereshit Bara Elohim et Bereshit Bara Elohim et
& God was a spirit hovering over the face of the waters
& God was a spirit moving over the face of the waters
& She created alphabets & flung them flaming through the Void
& breathed them into every living thing
*
(I spread like damp through drywall
unsheathe my cloudy eye
my muscular intent
the big reveal
I force my frame through crevices
wrenching toward the light
in all my blunt & terrifying need—
*
there was a voice that led me the child
makes herself if this is so
what is it she unmakes the threads inside me
churn & snap my body turning
inward on itself how many ways
to flay it how many ways
to starve that aleph
flaming signature gone silent in my face
comprised no script that either of us knew
*
emerging through the corridor
the desert slaked by rain
between the sad time
and the next sad time
among the quenchless columns
of white astonished salt
the shattered white horizon
above the starving ground
I touch the weathered doorframe
marked with dirt and blood
in this a kind of format
an interstice a splice
I hoist my heavy pack
I make my way
Copyright © 2018 Alix Anne Shaw. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Hayden's Ferry Review, Fall-Winter 2017.