[as flung gloves]

We hurl prairie dresses, too small for even
the tiny sister, stained pink, reddish at the

cuffs, down the garbage chute (and little
Bessie says, I used to fear the devil), drifting

through the corrupt breath of a machine born
to burn indiscriminately: (then I realized
                                    I had already swallowed him).

[the dark's ragbag]

Crows perch nearer to my window, humming.
Once, I saw a sticker of a raven on a laptop,
ruffled feathers like a spatter of ash, a splatter
of black paint with yellow eyes. When they see
me drawn to the glass, they pause, slowly turn
away in the air. Hover in the gusts above
a neighbor’s house: now everything not nailed
down is covered with husks, rags blown from
the street, plastic planters whisked back and forth
by the wind. Here’s the emptiness – just before spring.   

[the sky's far dome]

The pond is disappearing into the earth, you say, but
I saw how it returned last June, a dark swimming pool
filling in slow motion, deer swarming and entering
the soft edges. The sun rises like a hole in the sky –
to blind and push the weak. On TV, a white man’s face
looks captive, suffering. Blood pools from beneath
his hat and streaks downward. I wish you lived in this
century, I told you once. When a woman feels something
moving inside her, her eyes move skyward. In your absence
                                                                        tonight, I cannot sleep.

Titles are lines from Sylvia Plath’s Blue Moles.

Christine E. Hamm, queer & disabled English Professor, social worker and student of ecopoetics, has a PhD in English, and lives in New Jersey. She recently won the Tenth Gate prize from Word Works for her manuscript, Gorilla. She has had work featured in North American Review, Nat Brut, Painted Bride Quarterly and many others. She has published six chapbooks, and several books–including Saints & Cannibals.