Spinneret Girl at the End of Her Visions
by R. Cassandra Bruner
Overnight, the cobwebs latticing my rafters
reform with a new word torn
into their margins. Dragonflies, mid-
mating, gather as my mother’s silhouette
at my doorstep, then disperse into
heat-warped ribbons of air. Revelator,
what use are these auspices now?
I sleep with a bundle of peonies in hand &
wake clasping a widow’s unbodied
fingers. A radiovoice drones about
Christ lecturing the Samaritan woman
on the economics of pleasure, & I know
a syringe was the last thing to thumb the divot
of my partner’s elbow. Please, let me go
unblessed. Let me dart into whatever mouth
swallowed her & mistake its warmth
for hers. When I at last tear these tarps
from the window, let light gnaw into
my eyes, the way nightcrawlers burrow
through a dead doe’s sockets to find
brain, gutstring, heart—that cherished
slurry of softs & salts & reds.
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R. Cassandra Bruner earned her MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University. Originally from Indiana, she currently lives in the PNW. Her poems and essays have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, The Adroit Journal, Black Warrior Review, Fugue, Hunger Mountain, Indiana Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere.
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