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84 A Face to Meet the Faces Leda’s Flashback Maureen Alsop Breadcrumbs in ash survive hunger. A crescent of gray birds climb northward as I sift through the clapboard house. The dead were rooms I called through one daylight to the next. I gaze at a sparrow through the window. A pale flickering over my one blind eye as the other eye dreams of burning. The bird is a wet thread. He wicks blackness out of juniper, de-thorns branches, & tilts spirit from fruit. This incessant tremor in my hand argues against the irregular sway of hip; up the stairs, I clutch the rail, one foot rises. One foot another foot. Who is this walking in miracles? Who is this crossing XXX He is cancellation XXX I do not see I do not see I do not see light dulls the mirror XXX I am shadow passing over water XXX ...bridge between worlds...XXX The heart doubts all song. A lowing wind that dull green summer with little rain, sky as knife blade; salt thick inside me; dress torn. Choked in the corner of the barn, I’d taken his beard into my teeth, mouthfuls of feather between grain & gristle. Who knows what culled stains into the pine planks—clouded & throbbing. I am not this body. I am not the one sleeping alone in the reeds. This room is not safety—trespasser— route of flies. Leave me. I opened my mouth. I opened to God—Maybe Releasing the Kraken 85 I was never there if I had not been there. I better write this quietly as no one else who listens continues to listen. Better keep wishbone to the throat, better keep this bucket of cracked eggs under the bed. The grass at dusk now is as tall as my shoulders & the bird in my windpipe refuses to stir. Soundless thistle, I hear the heat of his breath, a flammable wheeze. Calm sips of air flutter. I cough a black rasp—snowfall through the lungs. I speak to the bird the softening murmur of bells, hoary plumes on his crest smell of clover. The night shimmers over the hills. It is warm in the dark the dark itself expands. ...

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