a n n e    h e i d e

from The Black City

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2

3

4

5

1

Wish you to stop knocking. 

Everyone oily
is wrist-deep
in contraptions

and grease, the kind
they slick back
with grease. 


Shake into shape:
             our machines make the design.

Of course we could
have constructed 
a fall from sheets
to slip from the window.

But rather, slip.

next

2

You rattle everything:

            I’ll shatter my house before you come 

            from the combs, come home.






oh please bring your chaperone

can you see me a white colt

all pressed into your bunker.




                         can you see me now
		
                         sticking to the hive

                         side, buzzing sticky

                         and thin.

next

3

You and your six
tall hands against
the mine-edge.

Weld you weary

against the finger-split
slippery. Some wax into

the nails and under skirts.

This is a collapsed cave
willed into with dynamite:

no quarry.

So if you can fit your body then
open the floor with your pressing
shoes and lunch pail, slip into
this small lake, underground.

The only spiders you see are
white and old and at the door
you made.

next

4

But can we leave you, leather
brace holding your arm
up right, pass you onto

the driver’s seat, and can

this water carried once
in your stomach make
thin wax for us, shaped

into young lines.

Find asleep,

lathered companion.

next

5

Forget:

            once a wedding here
            a water wife and
            bells to prove it.

Rumble vows. 
Your shoes into the floor/wax.

Forget:

            might reach the ceiling
            tight to the ceiling.

Veil in your 
sap, stuck.

next

ANNE HEIDE's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Ur Vox, Coconut, Glitterpony, and The Tiny, among others. She edits the journal CAB/NET out of Denver, and is currently working towards a doctorate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.