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    PROLOGUE

     

    The Witch

    We use many forms of divination –

    this is only a bone in the ribs
    a glimmer of white,
    a finger drawing in the frost –

    stuck with pins
    an egg cracks.



    CHAPTER 1

     

    The Witch

    I seek limited contact with the world.
    I keep mohair at my throat.

    I wear a pin of iron on my breast.

     

    The Mother

    Even now I beg you
    don’t wander past the quiet rows of fir.

     

     

    All the lions there have human faces.

     

    The Beast

    Tremendous suffering and beauty I bring
    to the atlas of delight a new river.

    Your body breathes above the clouds,

    you’re hung by the heels. A pinnate leaf
    waving to the water.



    CHAPTER 2

     

    The Beast

    Long life has terrible teeth.
    Asleep you yawn the tide to bed –
    moon, moon, moan and burst –
    it is a dusty polyp grown out of my heart.

    It is a harp played in the hands of the sun.
    A song from the bleeding neck of a goat.
    A small bird, calling from a dead tree.

     

    The Hero

    The entire notion of suburbs is emptiness.

    If only I could put my hand inside my chest
    I might –

    here in my wet feet
    my mouth flaps like a red fish.

     

    The Mother

    Now it’s the time of hunger
    the rain globes on the grass cause
    action in the woody stems of plants.

    How do we carry
    this endless resistance we have toward grief.

     

    Thera Webb is the author of two chapbooks: Reality Asylum (H_NGM_N) and On the Shoulders of the Bear (Fractious Press). Her poetry can be found in The Volta, Forklift, Ohio, Finery, Inter|rupture, Unsplendid, Hinchas de Poesia, and Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics. She is the art archivist at MIT and was previously the managing editor at Black Ocean.

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