Art by Susan Wilkinson
Swallow
Lizbeth Leigh Jones
Because she Would not stop for Death
would not abide Him, no
she swallowed Him whole, hollow bones–all
lodged Him deeply, muttering, fluttering
behind her cagey swelling ribs, allowing only shallow breath
where He could not brush against her loves,
her charges, her muted, future tenses
She coughed up ashes and laughed out howls
and silver-cordless, she communed
with angels who fell from dewy immortality
into the withering Now, tumbling inverted,
their feathers filling the blinking vacancy left by Death
along with whole nations of pleas and sighs
and scratchings down the wallpapered halls
Because she had so snuffed out night
there no longer followed the answer of day
No waking, no stretching, no succulent rising by chance
to prickly pear, juniper, frond or moss
only dust everlasting measured, leveled
in beakers of volcanic glass
or bellows frozen at Pompeii
And hope was the thing
with scales that struck at her heel
as she trampled memories back into being,
their sepia, silver-toned shadows overexposed by afternoon slants
of demands and insistence on instances
forced to bloom in winter
unwilling, into the Dumb indefinite
Lizbeth Leigh Jones
Because she Would not stop for Death
would not abide Him, no
she swallowed Him whole, hollow bones–all
lodged Him deeply, muttering, fluttering
behind her cagey swelling ribs, allowing only shallow breath
where He could not brush against her loves,
her charges, her muted, future tenses
She coughed up ashes and laughed out howls
and silver-cordless, she communed
with angels who fell from dewy immortality
into the withering Now, tumbling inverted,
their feathers filling the blinking vacancy left by Death
along with whole nations of pleas and sighs
and scratchings down the wallpapered halls
Because she had so snuffed out night
there no longer followed the answer of day
No waking, no stretching, no succulent rising by chance
to prickly pear, juniper, frond or moss
only dust everlasting measured, leveled
in beakers of volcanic glass
or bellows frozen at Pompeii
And hope was the thing
with scales that struck at her heel
as she trampled memories back into being,
their sepia, silver-toned shadows overexposed by afternoon slants
of demands and insistence on instances
forced to bloom in winter
unwilling, into the Dumb indefinite