Because she thinks
she wants a Red
movement
she can't put down anchors
(into these three gospel rivers)
or her hair
for the crowd empty
of dissenters
doing it all for fecundity,
for arithmetic
and patterns,
apothecaric sleep sweats,
because she wants to intellectualize
the taste
of berries in season,
the a-filigree (fallen chandelier)
of doing it when
it's right, when the time
is hard now
like contracting belly muscles,
like the top of the bump
(a bump of rock,
she was told by the one who couldn't
get bedrock
to save his own
totalitarian hide),
that pulls
to put it all into the world,
us all,
uterine musings
which always stop
revolts.
-- Michelle Stoner
Michelle Stoner lives in Friendship. Her publications include "If Man is Five," which appeared in Ossian's Dream, "The Mouth," printed in The New Growth Arts Review, "Reading Baudrillard Before Bed," published in The Collared Peccary, and Flats and Riots, forthcoming from WordTech Communications. Many writers featured in Chapter & Verse are guests of Prosody, produced by Jan Beatty and Ellen Wadey. Prosody airs every Tuesday at 7 p.m. on independent radio, WYEP 91.3 FM.
