water-veiled gut of guilt
By Haley Wooning
QuailBellMagazine.com
QuailBellMagazine.com
4.
water-veiled gut of guilt,
your death praises wholeness
on my altar
oaklimbs shift contorted and
gnarled holding year,
holding shadow
a dark light slants
through this black mire
my body bears its tides
a wish speaks silver within my eve,
she who speaks only to angels
why do mouths mortar against truth
and confession?
I walk with the sway
of last summer’s reeds
the violet heave of witchweed
once, I had a sea
autumn bells that ever-flickered
a wolfpaw’s briar
mothwings herded by wren song
and beastbreath,
burning down rows of alders
flesh in wonderful anguish
charred and ravened
cut from the tongue, bound to myrtle,
the pelt, the mind
there is a black pond stillyet
with infinite night
she has deprived me of my name, the animals
stand in the day’s descent,
all that was without language
lifeless, descending skies
black, thirsty clouds stretch the heavens
that dark guilt with which
I harbor
hours
now, I have the earth, and all that
I am sown to
I pin my past to a hymn
and forgive it
O, night of wolves, dawn comes
with a pink tongue
& the scythe of sun
when lovers gaze
do they know the shape of duration?
perish
my heart
so wingless
I am a woman
within an answer waiting
life flutters inconsolably
gnarled holding year,
holding shadow
a dark light slants
through this black mire
my body bears its tides
a wish speaks silver within my eve,
she who speaks only to angels
why do mouths mortar against truth
and confession?
I walk with the sway
of last summer’s reeds
the violet heave of witchweed
once, I had a sea
autumn bells that ever-flickered
a wolfpaw’s briar
mothwings herded by wren song
and beastbreath,
burning down rows of alders
flesh in wonderful anguish
charred and ravened
cut from the tongue, bound to myrtle,
the pelt, the mind
there is a black pond stillyet
with infinite night
she has deprived me of my name, the animals
stand in the day’s descent,
all that was without language
lifeless, descending skies
black, thirsty clouds stretch the heavens
that dark guilt with which
I harbor
hours
now, I have the earth, and all that
I am sown to
I pin my past to a hymn
and forgive it
O, night of wolves, dawn comes
with a pink tongue
& the scythe of sun
when lovers gaze
do they know the shape of duration?
perish
my heart
so wingless
I am a woman
within an answer waiting
life flutters inconsolably