ASSEMBLY

Under snow, the painted snow, the blood
and painted blood, black hooves
strike ice, strike lines perimeter
the glass factory. Inside
there’s a makeshift church.
The fogged glass is stain-lit
under-snow fluorescence.
And bread unbreaking
black sky metal-cold
over the road no one
takes home. Huddled
together, paint chips
eclipse the real moon
or at least what’s understood –
the sky we stood under.

~~~

THE   RESULTS

OUT THERE — gesturing
with my one good arm

the doctors scan
the horizon, how
it breaks through

black line to white line
the image weighted

opening my invisible skirts
fill the flue with tresses

millions to millions the cells scatter
too many ricochets to hold on

how long before it’s too long
to come back

~~~~~

Michelle Detorie‘s publications include the poetry chapbooks Fur Birds (forthcoming from Insert Press), Feral Scape (Dusie, 2011), Ode to Industry (Dusie/Playful Rectangle, 2009), Bellum Letters (Dusie 2008), A Coincidence of Wants (Dos Press, 2007), Daphnomancy (Small Chapbook Project, 2007), and How Hate Got Hand (eohippus labs, 2009), a collection of prose pieces about interspecies relationships and seabird rescue. Her visual and hypertext poetry have appeared in various publications and have been included in the Infusoria and Zaoem exhibits. She lives in Goleta, California.