ISSUE: Fall 2018
I have been through hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful.
— Louise Bourgeois
I want my web to hold. I want to repair
what I have made. I was not given the gold hive.
In me seethes the silk of invisible worlds. Spinning
my body inside of hairline emptiness, I project
my unwoven path. Dangle above the filaments
of what feels weightless. In some dawn my life
glows mud or bone or sorrow. It is whatever
you think can carry you from your childhood
without breaking your heart. There’s a prayer
that matters to the girl, to the mother, to all of
my daughters who are at work. The wind blows us
against each day. We birth a word or silence.
We snap threads impatiently with our teeth.
Solitude is a skull inside of our children
who don’t remember what it took for us
to free ourselves. Wingless & certain, we fly.
I am gone by the time you find a trace of
me. The gift of my eight legs spread intricately
from post to beam to corner. Look at me hanging
in the shadow of your fear. My art
brushing against your lonely face. My little clock
behind your brooms & ghosts. Your cells,
upon closer inspection, resemble my descendants.
Cast me into love or flames but do not leave me
alone in your house. It will only take us
minutes to haunt the body you have
orphaned. Pray that I am making my way
out of the hysterical socket of your eye
where you once held me
in horror. We can crawl together
along the awful trip wire of my hunger.
At the center of what I have done
to feed myself, my children.
