Strange Bodies
For Salvador Dali

Between two beds lies a story collecting laughs,
bees covet the suckled honey.
The women who have been tucked in cover
peeling time, warble like
verdant cedar beasts.

Metamorphosis,
on a forgotten night deep beneath woods hidden in
snow
the women
I know are Gods for how they hold
their burdens. Giant women,

they knock the icicles of doubt
from licked male tongues, hard woods that lose
leaves who explode, cracking bitterly from ice.

These women, are seasoned women,
my mother’s women,
the kind that carry

weight like Narcissus men think they do.

The Best of This

The devil has come with pretty fingers
and soft hands period
he says that I didn’t say “no” period
that I should want it slash
he deserved—

the velvet sunset he made me watch space after
his hands gilt cages to my sides
and the sun plunged and plugged the moment
when the experiment of strong men ended
space I wonder how the ponderous breasts
of sky can remain so undaunted period

he tells his friends that I begged
for his virginity
that I don’t say “no” slash
later when he’s drunk he’ll apologize
slash

I dream of large trash bags
chasing me
only I’m without
a mouth
an opened wound

but I won’t tell anyone
period

I learn that I didn’t love him
sometimes when I pretend to sleep dash
when my face was pressed to another man’s
back slash I didn’t love him either period

but the devil throws shoes asterisk
timberlines at both of us
untied ellipses

untied in an elm tree
I’m a strange bird,
in a copse in high summer, bare
period

not alone comma

not the only flustered
red sparrow stripped
in the woods in
a strong tree a slashed
bare tree
strike missing state through
roosting excoriated

but the woods are
no longer prone to
silence.

Benediction

A thrush flutters in the city, hysterical.
Trapped in claws of wires, reddish tail
stilled wings.
A survivor in the understory.

America’s sweet nightingale.
Hush, sing with mercy.

The street lights flicker, shadows bare
watching to trees.
I watch the bullet thresh through signs,
see the fall from behind the window,
feel a soft flutter.

There are small bodies in cardboard
along the pavement, petals and litter.
Sometimes theft looks like salvation
sometimes protection, murder.

Hannah Kinsey recently graduated from Chatham University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a MFA in Creative Writing. Kinsey then returned to her home state of Vermont. Her work deals with grief, nature and the combination of human relationships within both.