Christie Ann Reynolds

BECAUSE  YOU'VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH HER SINCE GRADE SCHOOL

All she's wanted, she tells you, is a bouquet of pine cones. Something that will burst
when she burns it.    (And it's all about this: bursting.)
   The act of recalling her stiff
plateau hair.     The way her laugh built a coffer of brilliant blood. How she named
your cells in memory of her massive father.   His one good eye.

Somehow, this is industrial.  You and your wrench a calling--
Dreams of alleyways and boarded windows revealing that somewhere,
in a dark wooden room, your mothers are holding hands.

Your children are playing cellos.
The cat needs to be fed.

IN THE SPIRI OF TWO

I am an eye opening for the second time.

A blink that happens when you try not to: blink

By evening I will have two selves.
Two mothers with one eye opening for a third time.


If this is practice, let it be a bowie knife.
Let all gurneys be knives.

(Twilight pauses.)

I've decided to pull cicadas and moths from their winter-husks.

In December, any hole will echo.

THE ONE TRUE STORY AND THE STORY OF ONE TRUE STORY

The story of our people begins this way. A billboard
proclaiming hot atomic love for anyone too late for ark-
departure. A match-mate syncopation of tornadic proportions.
All the farm people trolling on their tractors, all their hackneyed horses,
the stink of pig sty and grist mill gears--halt.

In the body, a story continues to molder. Children hang
damp clothes on a line. Dogs bound collarless. Emergency
meetings in the crotch of the slaughterhouse ensue. Let the cows
go. Keep the birds. The angels are crouching in garbage cans.
God is letting all the ogres go. The ark departs--

O fortunate fall, the grass is uprooted. Choke of hedgerows.
Wail of broken idiot hearts. Who has the stockyard keys?
Who's grieving a praying mantis? What wet fingertip is tracing a glass?
What has given birth to a spreading vein? And where are all the mice?

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