by Kathy Shaidle
I dreamed last night…
This is false in any poem.
— Jack Spicer
Turn ivy, climb
the starving bitter ladder of yourself & scale
some stony unsuspecting church.
Crawl weed-plagued tracks slave-laid, toward
the last horse
smashed by the last train,
heaving birth to ribs, sinews,
sticky fiction wings.
Observe: that
at an impressionable age, the pebbles
turn to fascism,
huddle to hear the sea's long monotonous speech
that smoothes them all round eventually.
But mostly forget Jacob–
all sighs and dirty toenails–
chain-smoking ‘ifs’ in God's face.
Unconditional release.
It comes without syntax, calendars or maps.
It comes. There is no ladder,
only rungs.
Grace is the hardest pillow.
