Put Me Under

The nurse reminds me to say goodbye
to the boyfriend,
splitting a thread on his shirtsleeve
and holding my underwear
in a plastic bag,
all nervous hands and dry lips.

The IV sings in my veins, a lilting siren sound
of cold and sleep, as I roll down halls my senses
cannot track.

The operating room is bigger
emptier
than I thought it would be
as if I first needed to feel small
to be made small.

The siren dulls to a whisper, and the angry white
of it all fragments

beneath my eye’s touch.
The nurse straps down my arms, and I forget

I have arms at all or bones or flesh, I even forget
my breasts marked with black Sharpie, angry lines

anticipating scalpel cuts. I forget it all. Restraints
mean nothing; I float free.

The swirl is interrupted by black,
my lashes dipping in pools of rest,

dancing the siren’s ballet.

​

​

​Sinking Beneath the Falls

Out on the county edge, the trailer homes
are sprinkled out like downtown dandruff, few
and fewer as I drive still deeper in
the rolling woods that line the darkest vein
of road to the extremities of green
and heavy silence. Then the road dissolves
to dirt and ends within black trees, so I

proceed on foot and follow trails of those
who curled around the woods before and left
the quiet deaths of stomping grasses in
their seeking wake. The trail takes me into
the mountain depths until I find the falls.
I hear the roar before my eyes can catch
a million drops churned white and thrown over

the cliff above. A great frenzied display,
but on this side, the pool is calm and black
and when I bend to see what lives below
that perfect skin, it only gives me back
my own reflection, blank echoes, this self
of water. As I slip my boots off and
I shed my coat, I find I want to know her,
the self beneath the surface, want to feel
the floating hair pass through my fingers, want

to sink under my own bewitching weight.