unblue
BY MAYA OWEN
Somewhere in the cold, white mind of the snow, the blood
was shed before there ever was blood.
The boy laid down
in the field. Crows gathered.
*
Perhaps, like music, our lives are written
long before being played out on the body’s
black key. Now, like a vinyl record re-wound
on which believers will swear
they hear the Devil speak,
the snow zips back into a cloud.
The dead unblue.
Somewhere in the cold, white mind of God,
a love’s dark code
waits for its cue.
words for snow
BY MAYA OWEN
i could’ve married the wolf but chose my own
crimson husbandry / of blood & its dark gifts;
the children we bore before we knew them.
i could’ve married the wolf but winter came,
brandishing its grey doctrines. now, the bitch
tells me she never wanted me, was merely
transfixed by the gimmick of my pulse. still, our
children grow into their furs, their teeth, the slow
drip & crescendo of their particular madnesses.
these days, instead of love-making, we grieve
the libraries we lost to fire— but you teach me
fever & salve, you teach me stars & their ecstatic
alchemies— & here in the poem, we turn out
our pockets to find that we have, finally,
no word for snow.
