Amee Nassrene Broumand
The Night Cloth
Sangak bakes, bedded on river stones.
Our greyer selves haunt the gaps where floorboards
meet bomb-rumbling walls. Outside, the war
of gaslighting
& gauze.
Gorge on poppy seeds, friend.
Wells of midnight nestle in saffron vials, gushing
from the cupboard. Status—
no diatoms spark in this ocean, no alcoves
gleam with squid eyes & gulper jaws.
Cooking isn’t for the squeamish.
Morning. Window spiders collect diamonds,
carbon charms
to ward off life’s decrescence. Outside,
cowboys deface a phoenix, binding her fire-born belly
with featherbone, grasping her girdlestead in a hawk-grip,
yanking
until death at the bridle.
Gretel
I
When I was three
I’d daydream
of a grey woman
who stored bits of people
in jars.
I never saw her
then—
II
A low sound, a sound near me in the dark—
a sound like a dying goose.
Perhaps she’s a witch after all.
She keeps watch—a curled worm—whispering,
Where I come from, the living eat the dead, then
become them.
III
The clouds want to storm, but can’t.
Disgruntlement grows, the vex & heat of the murk—
the hex. Townspeople wander the streets
in rising disquiet, unsettled by the perpetual sense
of expectancy.
Inside, the kitchen glows with fire.
I have a stick of celery
some rotten carrots
a handful of barley
& no meat.
IV
I fear the sideways pull of my eye,
the creeping call of my stomach.
I know the olive bones
of my skeleton—I can count them.
We’re lost. This trail
leads to a cipher, the circle
of my heart—
Rippling before us, a well of rainwater—
a Brobdingnagian crater in the earth, a mere of night,
a thaumaturgical gash, baleful yet hallowed.
Or is it a hopeful mouth?
The day turns smoky, the sun
as silver as the moon. I seem
to smell sweetbread stew—
V
She scattered suet
the quail came
she watched inside.
While tearing a quail
with my beak,
I saw her eyes.
VI
Boil & shriek—I start at the kettle’s cry.
The shadow of a child
hovers near the fire,
her source unknown.
Coronas
I
a (bee)—
wild & onewinged—
spins lopsided within the ravages
of the living room—
shuttered cluttered &
[gone]
smash the bottles against the wall
to make the buzzing
stop / or go / faster
the tide of the room rises—
sunlight drips from honeycomb,
festering in the corners &
frosted over with red gnats
& the honey sweetens
no more—
still, the Hunger
II
rising bloated & dead
tired / the sun crawls
across a loon bleeding
in the rushes
Let me show you my crown
in the flickering grass / under trees
& porches / floating
over the claw-foot tub / clocks
bite, expecting marrow & getting
a great moon of nothing
Let me open my mouth
cotton-candy-colored silver
floods the hillside & everybody
gasps—
old dust becomes new
bone & brains & bread
Let me show you my teeth—
gumdrops
gleam rotten
in the roar
III
cherry hummingbird
—the [bleeping] machine—
caged in bone / darts sad-eyed
a filament
melting into the afternoon
Today we gather
to remember the bee
—snatched from our sunfields—
by beaks of honey
& stone. Today we fall
into the afternoon
waiting in roselight
for the snowdrifts, the [BLEEEEEEEEEP
ing] avalanche—the birth
of mountains, violet
on the dark shore