“when the terror becomes unbearable,
the other becomes God.”
–Louise Gluck

confinement can be comfortable.
felt familiar in
the grip of load:
my chains hung from me
like the tail
of my self-throned
coronation robe

when I hoisted myself
on self and made policy about it,
my divination crumbled in it’s cell.
started at my temples,
made my crown;
the veil that obscured
the trail of my widow’s march
following the scent and
stepping lightly down the roads
that my men roamed further apart
from each other to leave me
in pieces in rows in their
new lovers’ homes.
on a shelf,
freshly dusted,
gilded by the yellow dust
of whatever stamen she picks.
I was mired in sudden freeze,
then implosion,
then retraction of amends
and I came

full at them
hook in mouth like
hungry lure.

“the pond”