New Poem: Russet-red On White, for DVerse and Beyond

Russet-red on White

Every month I would swell and ache.

The seedling would make its way

down the river in my belly

to the vine-damp gate.  My heart would 
extend a witching stick, a willow limb

whittled down with a point to make,

sending audacious inquiries into the night.

This body became a cave with an embered

hearth. The globes of my breast would fill

with moonlight, the hunger in me

dropping to all fours, calling out

in a sea of sweat.

Once sated, the angel of the mind sang.

My hands went wandering for skeins of wool;

out in the fields of spring the mares’

milk came in, the blood-bag burst

and foals arose from the grass

on trembling and spindled legs.

Once the moon waned, and passion’s furnace

cooled, how I had tilted myself

to a lover’s urgency,

urging the life milk on to reach

what this could be in time,

the storm of famine

would abate and garnet drops

of blood tell the story

of the heart leaching absence.

A womb in mourning drags the will

down spare furrows:

I thought now and then I could see

something infinitesimal with a tiny

tail, tadpole, a seahorse shape

in the russet-red on white.

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Once the bleeding didn’t come;

the moon waned and I made wax

at the nipple-tips, yearned and slept; 
a test showed a one-ring Saturn,

an eye at the bottom of the tube.

I did all I could to keep her there,

in the spongy hollow where I would

feed her as she grew;  I sang out

names, drank milk, brushed my hair,

walked the lawn’s length by starlight.

The night I bled her out of me

sweating and fevered, I thought

of my grandmother,

her petticoats pulled around her hips

her bodice restraining her breasts,

taking in my grandfather’s seed

with the oil lamp trimmed,

each time carrying until the infant

shot forth into swaddling and her arms.

My zygote, my archangel child--

had I not shed you again and again,

I would have suckled you

beneath the Pleiades;

I would have kept you close,

away from the dark songs

life sings, all peril and ruthless lack.

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copyright Jenne' R. Andrews 2012