Devil’s Lake

and that witch with her clothes unwrapped. I want the sugar

of it all abouting around me: the table and the cinnamon

stick, that boy bleating outwardly, to and through, without.

I want the lone hair who itches. The which-ones-are-those,

though they depress me like the dickens. Mixing eggs very

cleanly. The dirty less the dirt. I want to be so old I vomit

with it, my skin a crusty paper napkin. It disgusts me, all of:

the litany, the line with no minus, every dry thing crimping

prematurely at its ankles. The sun is a sad sort of white.

It makes me can’t breathe. I want the smell again, the faint

again, the red scorching of knees. Summer pots its scratchy

beads but the bright bride is tired. Besides the lack of burn

she is tired. If there was a seed for my feeling it would be

closed. I would want it. I would want the bitter belch of its

world, and there is (it’s crystal), and I do.