Mary Lou Buschi
Hysterical Pregnancy
When my dog disappears,
she is preparing: heel
to slipper, wedge to sandal,
making a nest—drags her plastic baby in too.
Sleeps there, until her blood finishes,
until the dark insoles are no longer safe,
and the skirts are hissing spirits.
Then she rips her baby apart.
The Episode in Which Rog tells Rach She's Not Getting Any Younger
That the sky seen through her eyes is faux
fur and vintage babies.
In which, like, I can't, that shoe is everything.
And Rog admits to biting the heads off Barbies.
Rach retorts, you loved Barbies—
In which Rach doesn't want to be known for who she is
and Rog explains that butter would never melt in her mouth
and then begs for another baby.
In which Rach tells him to find one,
in the smoke filled wood on the grassy hillock:
velvet skin, Diopside eyes, cheeks the blush of strawberries,
sitting wondrously in the cotton grass,
the sun tumbling like a gold coin.
Close Your Eyes Count to Ten
1
It's fine to make a game of it,
to make a shape of it.
At night when your fingers
carve mothers out of black sky.
2
What are you doing?
Pretending to swim in it,
to fly in it, open my eyes wide in it.
Passing
Through the body of a bird
summer rises in fits
and you will yourself
to love it,
playing the eye game
with the windshield.
First specks on the glass,
then streaks
give way to streets,
and then the fair,
pimple face girl,
you don't recognize
because she isn't walking
down the hallways
of high school
wearing her skin
like a slipcover.
Or the woman
you see reflected
in the store window
admiring a cotton dress,
$10.00 dollars
debating if it will last,
face turning from the light,
perversely,
sliding the dress back.
Static
The flesh of a plum is unsteady,
a deep incision
that doesn't bleed.
The unseen layers
stand beneath.
When we walk out
onto the dunes
you disappear.
Let's go back, I say, into the night.
You bite into a deep purple sky.