LITTLE SPINES
I promise you this mouth of snake
smoke,
summer like a gutted country
church house: field rich,
steeple stunted,
overgrown with fireweed, pews
broken & picked like teeth. The stained
glass in your eyes
saggy,
distorted by a grinning
gravity. I abrade
my knuckles on the cinnamon
red bricks of you – what will be
long left standing.
Where men
sleep beneath the floor.
I promise for you this splayed
watchdog. No need
for a chain
chewed bedpost.
No need
for ticking, the pull of blood
like needle-loyal thread
through your body.
We start at the end. I promise
you cradles.
I promise you coffins.
When we were in the forest of legs,
when we were children with different
connotations for wolves,
each finger was a little spine,
unbroken and accusing. Every time
we fucked we made an alcove
in the garden, and she so needed
secrets. A hedge maze – brimming
with spent, drugged
children – designed with no way out.
Brother, blood still lines
my fingernails. I still sleep
under a mobile of tire irons.
Oh holy night.
Oh how they ring.
BIO: Caitlin is a poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program.