Letitia Trent
The Fool
The maps are beautiful
in their folded booklets.
The atlases, too, have marks
where the mountains rise
and the highways cut. The text
reminds you that some
stretches of distance
cannot be crossed, so long
the way, so empty
of amenities. The map
includes possible times
of arrival, the distance
you might go by foot before
you fall face-first,
before your tongue
fills your mouth, before
you see such visions
the Bible terrors cannot
beat them. But your feet
could get there. Men have walked
up and over mountains,
women given birth
in crashing taxis as the windshield
sprayed the interior in
its green, fine powder.
You will reach the edge
of the map, the dog behind
you, naked, your clothes
in your bundle, who needs them?
You'll find the edge, the finger-deep
ridge on the map,
and believe you've gone across it
The Magician
Your instruments are before you
your well, your weapon, your coin, your stick
Here is the dream of every child
who can't find the place
where the body balances on the moving bicycle
Some people can right
a spilled cup with just
a mimed gesture, a whip
of the fine, loose fingers
some can run backward
within the time we usually
sit inside, a vehicle going only
forward: I have seen such
elegant habitations of air
that make the room fit
the body's spaces, make time
run whatever way required.
This is what you can do
with the body, fool.
Swallow the cup filled with Christ-knows- what.
Buy a piece of heavy jewelry.
Pick your way across the pebbles.
Insert the sword anywhere.
The High Priestess
I carved you on my body to locate
that whistling place
like the dark between buckteeth
Hello humming
in my head, bluebirds
in my wrist, cat crying
in my stomach, my skin
turned to snakeskin,
cold as the moon at my feet,
the marble my knees knuckle
my shade puddles
Here's the image
I keep like a doll
in my chest, this
one who knows and holds
my well-weighted pendulum
my stock of good cards
the pictures like pictures
I imagined as a child—the horse tied
in the backyard where the pond
overflowed with ice
it died before I was born
It was white
Mother had cried
sometimes it neighed
and woke the kittens
their eyes just opening
in the leftover banana boxes
I had other pictures,
now absent from their frames
their settings waving in the wind
of their absence,
give them back now,
fat fist,
marble in my chest,
doll whose hair
and hands won't move
but inside my empty
head the roots still rustle
The Empress
In the corn, among the whistling husks
and plugs of sweet, soft teeth, the silk brushes
our thighs. Our hands touch those tassels.
It's not as though we planned it.
We rose one morning and knew
how to find it, where we were going, what we wanted
to feel when we found it, though not
what we would find. The sky bulges,
with the potential of water. As girls,
we had seen those women
with round stomachs. We asked our mothers
how the skin could stretch so
without splitting. We asked, once we knew
what was inside them,
how it could happen, how one
could wake after, mostly whole,
with the same name and address
when it was over.
Those domes, drum-tight and veined
kept us awake
with their impossible dimensions.
We still have nightmares.
Now we know where to bring them.
Not always to the corn, of course,
or even any blossom. It's not the location
but the distance
between our beds and bare feet
and the destination we're not sure of,
but slide toward,
Jenny says it's this way,
her pockets bulging with copper.
Mary says it's another,
and she's covered in blue
from chin to ankle.
The Emperor
You never had a father
so it's difficult for you to see him
bearded on his throne
rams carved into the oak
the earth in his hand—he doesn't bother
to explain
where was he when the world
needed order, his sword sheathed,
his plenty kept in berry-sized jewels
in his crown, his horn
lowered in sleep
Still, he sits at the center
his very body makes order
crossing and uncrossing in clean lines
unlike yours, ripping out
its own lining
What do you need to order?
How does the King rhyme
with every King you throned
in his absence?