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.