"CONTAGION" - The Time After, LCP Chapbook Series, 2020
  
O hear us skimming the lake the spring melt calling
to the geese our bantering our imaginations transforming
lungs into enchanted forests

credulous illuminated we mettle ourselves as magnificent 
bestiaries of self-isolation as shuttled threads as knots 
of time in a feral weft woven by manic birds
  
newly returned and you my lumbering loon hoarse and 
hollering my longhaired gaul wild and swarthy my jaunty 
homme d’honneur my
  
charming wartime anti-fascist my avellinese capo shhh we 
don’t talk about la familglia my dreaded pirate my very 
great friend in rome O Biggus—

and you call me your columbina carved with ink your blue-
faced celt your valkyrie predisposed to conquer and pillage 
steal those goats burn that village

in our west end streets we are each minute’s exodus and 
genesis lutist and troubadour we are the ballads of our 
tendons and our bones we are every
 
sweeping tidal bore mud flats and diaphragm finite as 
Florence during her black primavera when the young 
gathered fragrant carnations and carried them sweating

sickness laying low Anne Boleyn in her one thousand days 
her pestiferous nightmares of you and me rapacious incubation 
and lymphatic swellings
 
contagion—

it is like this 
like this O 
like this
  
dwelling in—our bodies countries and abodes hours and eras
infectious descending and ascending travails and tempests
  
 it is like this 
 like this O 
 like this
  
renaissance borne on the scourge’s resurgence scoured hands
stinging we are clasped throwing ourselves backwards onto
  
the bed where there is a tolling of us pealing and resonant 
we are fou rire and flushed—all that we are now all that will 
ever be of us 
  
will never exist beyond this beyond our cells and laughter in this
disorder we carry each other’s heart in a fist well-scrubbed 
  
 squeezed
  
 in a rhythm you 
 to me you to 
 me you to me 
  
 a steady brachial embracing
  
 it is like this 
 like this O 
 like this
  
our spirits neither downcast or uplifted but unending suspended
in the chest’s tight treasuring in the beat between inhale and 
breathless 

"GRETA HRÍMGERDR" - Gnaw & Gnarl, FHP: NB Chapbook Series, 2018
 
transitional cell-sick stubborn-Greta Hálfdansdottir became
         hrímgerðr: illness-withered
crone-bent smoke-haired pallor-grim Greta Hrímgerðr irritable
         and quarrelsome
round-shouldered and gloaming-fearing pulled the bedsheets to
         her chin
recalled a voyage parent-accompanied on a Nepalese riverboat

in her winter-darkened window my galdr gaze scryed their vessel
tide-turned and fog-steered rudderless drifting through Terai
         wetlands
halted by a shroud of marsh birds undulating into the dusk by the
         thousands
exposing in the long grasses of that country frost-aged and crone-
         bent a vǫlva

to whom Greta Hálfdansdottir shouted greetings until Eric
         Hálfdan her father
silverheaded pillar-straight strong-shouldered but omen-blind
         bade his noisy
progeny Be silent. Greta Hrímgerðr gestured to her reflection said
         No vǫlva
was there ever—from the bow I hailed my fylgja: crone-grey hospital-    
         gowned bone-bodied.

duty-laden Charles Hálfdanson brother-brought his sister-
         vagabond stubborn-Greta Hrímgerðr
tongue flyting to the seiðmenn of oncology: Greta-Hrímgerðr
         crone-grey body fluid-filled and
corpse-bloated flyting Charles Hálfdanson my father silver
         headed pillar-straight strong-shouldered
laid both his sister and his hopes before gods of scalpel and
         pharmaceutical cure-all


Greta Hrímgerðr hysterectomy-delivered the cancer baby-sized
         and organ-gorging
colostomy-bowelled fevered Greta Hrímgerðr harridan-hounded
         surgeons with complaints
of her wound wandering and suppurating from unexpected
         places so into Odin’s empty eye
they slid her— the organ-divining machine discovering liver-
         hidden the dooming dísir

I: Braga Hálfdansdottir the amber-haired verse-smith
         strong-shouldered Vör-sighted
spent each evening heavy-hearted light-voiced visiting my
         father’s sister stubborn-Greta Hrímgerðr
her life-thread measured by the constrictor-cuff machine and
         sustained through clepsydra-intravenous
optimism-sickened hospital food-refusing she took from my
         aunt-cheering hands the rice I made her

from sunset passed moon-rising and after the curfew-crowing
         slowly going
we ward-wandered and paced the breezeway walled by windows
         winter-sieged
Our kinship greater said stubborn-Greta Hálfdansdottir In that we
         are women
of wanderlust: sea-roved and land-rambled. we steered our trek
         king-tired feet

to the sicklings’ chapel I guided her stood hand on the pew’s
         shoulder as she Bibled
at the informal pulpit stroking the Irish lace altar grimacing at
         the mortuary van visible
through the stained glass my aunt Greta Hrímgerðr crone-bent
         smoke-haired pallor-grim
thanked me for my kindnesses but nun-minded was I never—I
         gave nothing to her but my time 

I: Braga Hálfdansdottir amber-haired verse-smith remorse-
         ridden might have studied
the doctor’s doctorate been a sleuth of veins and vim taken
         valkyrie halberd and spear
to bodies’ Ragnarok but fylgja-led to the word-smithing of my
         mother’s people my knowledge-gleaning
verse-creating of little use to stubborn-Greta Hrímgerðr my
         father’s sister norn-denying dísir-doomed


the orderlies troll-mighty came to gurney-gather the flesh-
         wasted bone-body of Greta Hrímgerð
down down into the hospital bowels they bed-steered her into
         care and kind assertiveness of life-end
nurses graveyard grey and silent in the palliative care unit my
         aunt Greta Hálfdansdottir slept pain-sedated
in a room cloister-quiet single-bedded cord-tangled with
         medical equipment Hálfdans gathered wake-waiting

in the looming star-spotted winter gloaming I daughter of
         Charles Hálfdanson accepted his seat
of vigil-keeping heart-strong fate-defying Greta Hálfdansdottir
         sickly-struggled to turn her body
Charles Hálfdanson long-loving sister-pitying curled his fingers
         in stubborn-Greta Hálfdansdottir’s
clutching bent his silverhead to her brother-begging voice-
         failing final-wishing Get me out of here