Author: dhenning

Touch me in the night of my body.

Where the wind can’t get in.

Where the flowers are layered rose petals.

My but we were lovely, captives
and all. Each day the witch
would dress us up. She was keeping us
for herself.

If she were someone else’s sister
I’d again make her mine,
twist her bones

There’s only one stonethat matters. Cushioned in mudand clay and seaweed,it feeds on dreams. In the sludgeof spring’s first run-off,a hand might reach down,lift the nearby weight of one,skip it across water’sirrepressible bone. Whohas picked such a stonefrom amongst the many? And why that one? I was once touchedby such a stone and becauseof that…

It happened one night, perhaps more,
that a sleeping Canada Goose
in Lassen’s Honey Lake
hadn’t felt the trap ice
creep in around her body
holding her prisoner, unable

ever a skip roping feign,
nor does it invite curious spectators

When my hair was still auburn,
I picked oranges from our tree on Downey Way
in Sacramento. You played giraffe,
circled the tree with your orange picker.

Years later, my grandfather

reached into his pocket for a handkerchief

and extracted my grandmother like a molar from the grave

There’s no exception to the strangeness

Who’s astonished by the way
stars smell like communion wafers?

Already the galaxy’s priests
have rounded up the runaways.