Letter 031825
Dear Ethel Cain
They are moving the body from star to star when a landmine made in a dot of blood yawns arisen somewhere in the white acre of my poet friend’s eye. Needing a past, my sister lets a snake eat her entire stomach. Father invents in the grey cinema a remote for loneliness. My friend becomes an angel obsessed with redhaired dolls. My father leaves the cinema wearing nothing but a seashell and spends the rest of his life dreaming of a doorbell that tracks decay. Three mothers we can’t place leave together for a nightmare where a fetus bounces into the back of an out of control pick-up truck. I keep changing what my mouth holds, but it all fits.
This poem got me writing again, thank you for your words!
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They are moving the body from past to past.
My friend’s eye is a stomach. A mother. It keeps
changing; everything fits. The inventor of loneliness
killed himself in a yawn the same color as my doorbell—
the same sound, too (a ringing acre of white hot blank ).
Be sure the gun is a mouth before you kiss it. Be sure
they are moving the body because the body no longer moves
itself.
Sincerely, MJ