Epithalamium
The heat that rises
From our marriage bed
Powers up this house
Summoning a cradle,
Undercroft &
Buttery;
Colored jars of
Seasoned fruit,
Museums of ripeness
Captured at the peak – just
As we are –
Citified –
Reveling in
Ownership;
Mortgaging
The future.
The pregnant car disgorges
Only us. It’s winter.
Drunk as silver fish
We beat our gills as light
As hummingbirds.
In an amethyst ring
Of drypoint trees
The half-built house
Gapes and swells
Its timbers stink of sap.
Windrill fields occlude
Our crossing, so you carry me
High above the thorny osiers.
We sleep aloft for safety
Locked and levitating
In this space of air
One season only,
Unseen by angry outriders;
Bloodless in our wedding robes
Like the doubled membranes
Of the frozen flowers.
SHIRLEY JACKSON: A Light Upstairs
This house is empty
Yet hardly unexplored –
Something stirs aloft.
The fat lady’s afraid because
She cannot climb
She sits and eats like a lonely child
Celebrating birthdays
A cat along each shoulder.
She lifts her tarot card and listens
Her own heart gasping in its womb of flesh.
She fears cars and crowds and planes
Elevators and department stores –
Reads only stories where killers
Are pursued, writes only tales
Where innocents are stoned.
It’s hereditary.
The angry villagers once burned
Her grandpa’s house.
She smokes anyway, lighting repeat matches in
An unsafe mansion where
None escape alive.
Alysse Aallyn 