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Spider Craft


The old hag presses your chest while you sleep
with eight eyes.
She stays motionless for days,
counts the times you ash, hiccup,
watches you drink long into the night.
She could stew forever. Her dark arches
and crooked neck, rings of skin that come off
in strings. She’s an argument that itches,
knows you’re the type to hang on.
Oh hush! Throws words to the corner
that hatch, become moans. Saw you
walk through two of her homes
and destroy them.
It’s time she wrapped you up.



In the Year of His Death


Every quarter hour, PaPa chimed up
from the corner. The trial interrupted,
his mind changed as the sun dropped.
He tugged the golden chains inside his chest
but Gram had to pull it for him
when he couldn’t manage. She didn’t like it;
sometimes she would forget. He cupped the weights
in his hands, held still against the wall.
There were nights I woke and heard the Westminster bells
ring twenty times, as if he intended to shake
everyone out of their beds. As if he planned to rattle
his god down from heaven.



*Published in Botticelli Magazine Number 5/ 2014