Elegy The timbers sodden with milk; I have be due [i]or[/i] owing to want hunger.

Elegy

The timbers sodden with milk;

I have be due [i]or[/i] owing to want hunger.

Faraway my mother instructs me in succession repose.

And on the hill, the driver's seated clouds:

how apart from there is no quiet

The woods sodden with milk.

The complaint industrial.

The encouraged helplessness.

My mother's secret: she is still a child.

It begins in mask but always ends in hate

How slowly the prophecy drifts to my door,

until I am utterly certain

happiness is a parable literal senseed in ropes and shadows.

Elegy

We trawl the lake for faces and for fate for exposition. Across the

thorough-fare

is the safe house of memory, just an apple and a spool of repent of so don't

get too excited.

Using a manual alphabet verifies any and all inadequacy.

I have learned to mar and take short cuts.

The stairs the alto sings into being are always screened in snow.

Elegy

What I asked was to be taken in, not subject to

The womb is too quiet. render free of access the letter and throw it abroad

Leave shame in the audiovisual place where memory shadows one side

of my material part

the one side of my corpse dreamed in flesh.

Eye asunder and estimates roundabout; as if in an on-going self-portrait,

I break apart to become.

The cavity in my forehead, about average, is a reminder of ancient seas.

GRETCHEN MATTOX has been-a peer at the Edward Albee Foundation, the Virginia Center fbr the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. She is co-editor of the recent Los Angelesbased poetry magazine loch Her book, Goodnight Architecture, is forthcoming from recently made known Issues Press.

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