Kristen Henderson

Through a trick lighting technique the skyline was made and faded with the care of a pointillist_ maybe aiding us to think nothing was missing. We traded verbsabout what was happeningin the metropolis, realizing,in the scorched plum of dusk,actual human infinity was occurring on an island before us....

She was so cool, as she knew, ankles crossed at the puckered hem of granite gray sweatpants, and she also knew I was watching from the open doorof the B train__atching her pose in apparent comfort at the girder of this city thoroughfare.

It was as if someone had leftthe bird thereas a kind of telegramof feathers, oily feathersthat looked like they__ struggled,shuttered a little before letting gointo flightforever.

Dear Anonymous, I've got a secret I know you can keep it because you don't really exist....This is what shapes you, this is what makes you as authentic as you are fake.

A giant motherboard of geese,unruffled by the statepolice, swarmed in unison,in harmony...

Once lively peonies nowwind-weary, and ragged at the edges, hang their heavy crowns; rain on their backs,one final act, beforedetaching from the stemand falling down.

The outfit, tight in places, and loose in some, says as much in the buttons as it does in cuffs.

In history, the bleeding from arbitrary beatings, forced breedings, and choked-heatbreathing could almost be withstood by soul-feeding songs sung, or listlessly hummed just to go on.

Such is a communityof inviolable immunity, protectedfrom tampering or harpooningmutiny. Every better thinker__ impulse to shrink us (at the shoreline from our lifeblood__ deep pulse) uses disparaging scrutiny to sink us.

I write for pages,get lost in the mezzaninehidden from stages.

Even the bees I'd swear were sent to protect us in the delicate business of hives and honey are stung to silence by the news that something winged has lost its flight.

Think of the Christmas presentof gashes you opened when, in an attempt to be Superman, you slid in stocking feet on a slippery wood floor and crashed half way through a window. Hopes of heroism dashed on the heels of no clear sighting of Santa.

As a woman still,without the right kind of mouth,my tongue__ of no use.

I tell you once and for all__n front of the angel pictures on the wall, that I am not a host to load-bearing ghosts or headyentities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen farinto the dense atmosphere of the living.

Would it be enough to rock on a stormless sea with each our separate memories tuned to the state of the sinking sun?