Nance Van Winckel

Who Died and Made You Our Foreigner?

 

A horse clomping by and a cell phone's

psychotic ring.

                  Across the tundra earth

       a shy city                 slowly advances.

 

As always the upstairs spirits of the Danish sisters

take their time       coming down,

navigating          behind the precarious balance

of their breasts,         quasi-content

            as buds of ink.       Here, please be

                   a pair       of astronautical asterisks,

 

or, alright, this indwelling of snowfall.          I hear

            its awkward         down-shift of gears.

                        I catch its whiff of oblivion.

 

                         *                 *

 

A nod to stoic ice,         to the backwards-streaming stars,

            as from our old Singer         a scarlet gown

                        flows out.         I am so very me

                                    in you:         invisible seams,

                                             buoyant bodice.

 

                         *                 *

 

Calls out of time.              Hooves kick up loose cobbles.

            In the aunts' old mirror over my dresser        familiar frowns,

torrents and tidepools,         I wade in.     

 

Camphor, mustard plasters,      dark clots on the X-ray.       

            Recall, won't you,        my hand       

                        with the dropper        descending: three drops       

                                    and goodnight,       six       and so long.