into the rookery

the Liar ensnares mouth of friends  hot honey clinging to their teeth  folkloric propaganda  searing skin of innocent accuser of the brethren  in mask of inverted holiness  sowing discord, and visions  of their own imaginings  spoken not in scripture  charismatic speculation  apocryphal sword severing  the seekers from the Kingdom scavenging

in woman's subjugation, the mark of disorder where the redeemed are called to yoke in mutual submission singular yet multiplied, agonized, coronating the asymmetry  of spliced divine unity to hunger in heart, bloody-kneed  vixens and viragoes enslaved to the seven faces of ritual separation  until the writhing amidst

snake-jawed, i swallow the sun — it promises warmth, and there is none.  casting shapes of some life i've bent: a lion's mouth, a strange lament.  and they talk to me about orange bottles, demonology, prism, and prison, and tell me of places i've already

i am still refusing to perform in my ballet recital, telling my preschool teacher i wish i had a gun, maladaptive daydreaming, twisting my hair into knots. i am still tempted to touch the robin's eggs, but i don't. communing with things unseen. i am still

“where'd you get that from?” “it was lost.” “it has to stay outside.” "i know.” tie it to the cherry blossom to watch your hours through the screen door: needless, aimless, ornamental. hang a hallowed noose, lift it up, leave it so there's something soft

do not feed me — i am unmotherable. gravedigging for lobotomized licentiousness: bad, bad dog yet again, and interminably. they forgot to tell me i was made wrong: is it supposed to feel like being eviscerated, mom? is the crushed little grey squirrel on the pavement turned upward worthy of less

o, sad little shadow o, little lost sheep — motherless and aimless, the spirits do not relent. too young to know better: little girl with her hand through the fence feeding demons. tugging at your sweater, nipping at your heels, and everyone knows. but you've not the heart to

i fit once folded neatly, deep into your silences, before the involuntary evolution of jagged edge plagued by a sordid determination to slice through — i kiss your cheek, and adorn you with jewels: i am your Judas, but love you moreso, and most brutally. unable to reconcile that you are

the jackal says you've chewed through the soul-thread like a rat's offending limbs in a glue trap —and cast it from you. the jackal says it's red, but it's blue.  it says it's ok to hunt for sport.  the lady

some unspeakable, untenable, unrighteous thing in me, my daughter, yields to you.  i cut your fruits with crafting scissors and sense your mischief from other rooms.  God and I speak now solely of you.  my Spirit authority sits in a drawer — i wield it only against the rash on your

suspended in the lawlessness of the ungovernable intervals between distance and pleasantry: i am hungry, please speak unbridled, of your day — are you lonely, rinsed in blue? are you seen?  they paved the basin where the swallowtails danced before i could tell you  i'm entangled in bloodroot and

here i am — a stranger, a sojourner in your lands here i am —in the thicket making tourniquet  of the ties that bind here i am — to vindicate my honor, and dig my well, and father my nations,  and obey.  but He says, "bring me your Isaac." and

i dream you held, as pink-shell encases little fleshy forms that crackle and burrow to shield from flighted scavenger though you are vast as the stars and the sands i dream you, busy in your kingdom where the lettered olive and the shark-eye hold the sun in instant film  by

weaponize me, Rejoice: as i am slain  by soft-palm surrender charged to speak for corner of Kingdom  periscope of Spirit,  catalyst of Unseen  in uprightness, though spineless cherished victim of The Isolator, theif of Joy penned in, pooled in clavicle  grows their teeth — faceblind to whom the Lord has made

estuary under rib  costal cartilage cradles  elusive arcane sentiment breaking currents, anchoring shrines of sharp-smile  skyward-palmed sandbar of skyline, surrendered unto only sometimes  crafting magpie stash of molten cold-eye, weapons cache  of collected carrion,  preserved in time — sweet, and mine hawks and kites howl and wait and witness i hunger,

tangerine-rinsed parable of honeysuckle sundress the tiller and the harp pave wildflower upon cedar snowing cinnamon for cinder His needlepoint glimmers in the gathering of saints  clean floors and war drums unlanding dove, uncertain, yet so very certain convicted, and ever-Loved the wild in marrow remembers revival tents, albuterol and

i am the rat king, writhing scripture in the skin the lotus flower petaled up in your pocket  shedding form to witness the chapel of your disarray combatting drunk dog scavenging for sinner's flesh, dosed of strawberry moon in teaspoons, not torrents  born and die by kind strangers

eating your stray-doggedness  absorbing your bloodguiltiness to become your unbecoming  kneeling within your garden praying remedy upon the daisies ghost green in your splinters bowering the bent and overgrown sanctity that sleeps in marrow shielding the slow-blinking owl  of your crooked unbelonging lacing myself through your joints and all your

lend it all to the girl with slipknot knees and which phase of dandelion wakes today upon her sheets all vertigo and fevers breaking owe her the favor of the river i carry: the bed formed of her own hands. each stone arranged to snag her quiet things no one

something within us both, taken too late from the vine, is a sugary sludge, bruised and trying having known too much of the sun pushed past its warm christening and bent beneath inexorable glaring cresting upon indiscriminate softening bowing to horizon of decay too sweet for use, or reception scouring

the positional asphyxia  of bending around what is not mine folded up and fed to the floor vents haunting her jewelery box the hinge that creaks on the back gate bones beneath the garden path  in radio silence and hushed tones the dragonfly twitching on her windshield in the wiring

holy ground: part of me was made here. forged between the porch rails  in maroon brick and homesick marigolds this house is my bones — it settles encircled, where the earth builds walls and sky dips in to the mug of the mountains  to bless our gardens, and our holding  and