from Keep, signs

And so, in my dream, might not the girl have been hurriedly gathering the shards of her own fall?

Yasunari Kawabata

youre the boyfriend of the sister. youre the sister. both in a bedroom. bare save the heart-shaped bed with

red satin or silk spread shaped also like a heart. someone approaches, jabs syringe into your thigh. a jester

figure appears appended to podium feet from the bed. legs riveted to base. figure in brightly colored

clothing: half theater, half clown. pointed hat flickering a checkered black and white, the jester faces the

scene. in the bed, you are the boyfriend who leans in to kiss the drugged girl. morning you are the girl.

entering the kitchen, you find your brother; he stares. scattered on all kitchen surfaces are small scraps of

paper all with one word handwritten. your brother turns to you and says: everything is personal.

*

holographic venomous green snake with red bands curls past your brother commands be still each sense a

lens refocusing wave patterns a context swirls when lens is moved away wave interferences form

holographic patterns synaptic southern river's shore sister snake half coiled shallow water circuits despite

how still bites modular a cluster of neurons computes evening water senses motor functions bundles of cat

tails assemblies of modules the family gathers cellular the snakebite |the leg hours in waiting room,

poisonedno known means by which tissues other than the brain are capable of memory storage but

morning your leg aches

Deborah Poe is the author of the poetry collections the last will be stone, too (Stockport Flats), Elements (Stockport Flats), and Our Parenthetical Ontology (CustomWords), as well as a novella in verse, Hlne (Furniture Press). She has published several chapbooks, most recently Keep (above/ground press). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Jacket2, Fact-Simile Magazine, Court Green, and Coconut. For more, please visit deborahpoe.com.