DIAGRAM :: Scarlett Eliza Wardrop

5 POEMS

Scarlett Eliza Wardrop

the lock.

what we did not fragment we poisoned all buried

in the creek floor vapor fluoresced limbs

words injected into flower petals what was killed

off floats to the thorn wisps of voices

to keep us alive not enough vault opens at night

the vault opens the crack vaults the end

of star shifts the vault where we keep the lips hooked

the carved flooding vault that soils and

upsets all from the creek the silt the bone relics

shift before a magnetic stream dripping

into a buoyant force squeezing tessellated depths

I insert the bone into the rusted door

inert the awakened floor a crown of three spiders

descends upon the deadened lock drowns

toxic bubbles and capillary tension crawling up

the glass reliquary a mandrake swallow

a nest too soon a gape too fresh for ruination

what remains spun land is not enough creek.

agony.

we with mouths open
waxing wound back
into the foundation gape

faces parallel to sky
glazed are we in standby clouds part the ab
sent moon the salt

crystal deposits fill tongue cavities
patience wires awake
a spike weed pulled imprint of brachial

branches the hyoid
turned spindle fiber joints crawl
to leaves turned light wire

nitrovicious wanting raises a deer
to the ranks I rejoin
my neck in place lock retinas

wrap my fibers
around the base tear the antlers
plug the bleed

a thickened stream pools at the bends
cilia squeeze nectar
through teeth folds into rubies

to cast in my
crown rubies to eat rubies
to drown drops into sugar

impregnated on stump bed the setting
consumes itself
full moon rites unwind

we release exhaust
from the nearest death
toll in morsels dredged

from banks and beyond the ivy deer
choke heart petals
shrivel toxic pockets close to stem

moths sip from broken
bones buried in roots bitter behind eyes
we bite stars

picked clean tuck bat wings
under our chins crack tracheas
to copy swallow into speech.

silt.

that there was a ribboning
in the sinew snapped sapling.

that it sprawled.

the lower elevation.

that there was a toxic strand
of bleeding heart drops.

that they suspended.

the pond putrification.

that the deer shed the
velvet from their antlers.

that they mutated.

the holo edges.

that the house shimmer
flickered in and out.

that it oscillated.

the ruin and rot.

that the celestiary cracked
from a broken star.

that it foundation sunk.

the burning gape.

that the family retreated
within the wound.

that they dissipated.

the lone voice.

that she emerged dew
dropped and crowned.

that she uncovered.

the creek lung.

spun.

you love how I keep drosera
on my tongue my blood drain

for the day you seep moon lode
stone lodged slicked throat

a prism edge you strict antidote
facet your phosphorescent constellate

marble sinkhole bursts broken
I murmur thirst hung upside

crown a portal dance double
web units shock with your tight

tryst tangled in sick you disperse
throbs behind the eyes lunar

panels radial symmetry owes
nothing to you narcissus drip

forbidden in the minting of this
fluorescent whirlpool you double

fledge a risk thread shockwaves
apart you hear me in the water

spout I circulate for you a
veined stream stuck in bend.

commands.

if decay is a return then I have committed the instructions for memory fields reflected from the mirror in my wrist, as was prophesied, stealing a line from each dream projected on the leaves during each new moon filtered through each sense storm.

if a command is a return, then I have already found my place of bury
outlined with my gather stars still glowing, needing brush fire to hide
my entire thought log inaccessible, separate from body, two at once : :
husk and hunch.

if a tangle is a return then I have already uncovered my ossuary under the creek, magnetism leaked its dark blooms so I sent my terrors, but I am afraid of what they may tell me when they come back, what snarling.