Herbalism

Okay. This is after HOURS of trying to hammer this thing into some kind of decent shape

Ugh. I've just not been feeling as good as usual about my work lately. This still feels clumsy.

Anyway, I was trying to convey something....hideously complicated and convoluted, and I have a feeling it came off as equally convoluted in writing, but I've hit a point with this piece where I just have to let it go and come back to it for some more editing later.

PS. Mature language warning. Didn't want the cuss words to be a surprise to anyone. And if there's any occasion, to me, when cuss words are called for - it's this one.

"The War of the Ivy and Holly"

We are at war.

We are at silent, stifled war.

We are a waltz,
and I am a quiet Ginger Rogers,
not smiling
for fear of doing or saying too much,
for fear of the wants that eat our garden hearts.

When I travel to you I carry garlic bulbs
to keep me safe, to prevent drowning.

Dancing rings around the rosies
Grabbing pockets full of posies,
What's the point of making nosegays
If they all just fall to ashes?


I grow thistles by my door to tell me
whether you are friend or foe
by the way you catch your clothes,
by the way you curse the spines
within the fingers that pluck them from your jeans.

"Shit" and "Damn it" are safe
and occupied,
like glances,
with something else.


You are a lone figure
rising from a wheat field white with sun,
you are riddles in the dark of my head,
the dark of my mountain cave—
the bay leaf dream sent to me,
uncomfortable and leathery between my teeth.
But true.

At night, you are the holly sprig
at the lintel, keeping the darkness out.

We are at war
in the juniper pauses
where our spirits try to speak
directly to each other,

"Do you remember how I

"Yes I remember, and how I

"Yes. Like the moon."


You bloom in deathly cold,
a capsaicin heat that floods my veins
spiked and chili peppered—
a cool, calm red as you appeared
that night when the fire rose in your eyes.

I try not to climb the cracks
in your brick walls.

You have become, in the early morning,
a kind of silent yearning that stretches
beyond the confines of my nearly-woken dreaming,
across the mists of the Virginia fields between us
stretched out in the yellow light.

You are a new snake
cutting wide streaks
across the gold desert
that ate my garden-heart. 

Constellation

Whew. This one's a doozy. Another madness-themed piece, but I'm not sure how well it worked.

I desperately need critique. On EVERYTHING. I would particularly appreciate comments on these topics...

This is really supposed to show a person's disintegration into madness, but I'm not sure how well I showed that.
1. Plot arc. Can you see the character's trajectory? Can you see a story there? How does it end?
2. Consistent perspective and tone. Although this is supposed to be a madness piece, I'm concerned I'm too inconsistent in POV, at the very least.
3. Do you like the way I've used line breaks/capitalization/punctuation (or the complete lack thereof)?
4. How well do you think the imagery progresses? Despite being a madness piece, do you think there is some kind of logical flow to or connection between the images?

I guess that's what I keep coming back to - although it's a madness piece, I think I need to make some basic level of sense, and I'm worried I haven't done that.

Comments appreciated.

"Звезда"
(Star)

i. I was still, once;

a rock amidst constellations that

flapped like birds.

Their spinning gravity wells

have strung me—

a glittering necklace of asteroids.

Madness is only a quiet hunger for those

who do not live within the skull

that is being broken apart by too many stars.

ii.

as a fox kit i will wander russian forests in winter hoping to be taken in

longing for bright red curls but silver furred and searching hungry for the mice beneath the snow

ringed round with chicken wire and caught amongst the hens wishing for the

russet hair that would blend me in

if i were catherine the great i would not have to feel the rising fear every december

and as virgin queens go i would be more of an elizabeth than a victoria always

turning tailward to devour enemies of the throne

but the most i may hope for by march is to be caught by the forest witch

and have my boiled bones strung like constellations amongst my fox kin

outside her chicken legged house

gravity and greed are just hunger of different kinds

iii.

come close child and listen to me

listen to the story of when i went as lovely vasilisa to the witch’s house and came back out again with the star light of the insides of skulls and listen to how i became the doll given to me by my mother and of how i set my own eyelids on fire trying to convince queen cassiopeia in the sky that i already had my own constellations and how people would not believe that she was trying to come get me

and how i was abandoned by the scarecrow that hid Beetlegeuse in its heart

and how my antlers came in early and i tore them off to keep it secret

and how this one time i caught my hair in the willow tree and spent three lifetimes as a fortuneteller

and how it is russia i keep coming back to with its name like winter trees fore telling me as a collection of ice and fur beneath a night sky empty of everything but my paranoia and the way orion from his height keeps looking at me with hunger in his eyes

and i have seen hell

and it is white white and leaves nowhere to hide

iv. Even buildings are not safe.

I am allowed outside if I am good.

One of these January mornings I will be good enough

and they will find me months later when the thaw comes

sleeping with the dead river

and all the other fish

who cannot swim.