from inside. Things to be

hollowed: ripe gourd, pig shoulder,

where seeds must go. {The eves} remember

your lips laden

in vowels

where whispers tongue

back what must be held.

Softness softens. The spider

crawls from out the crevasse –

vacuous conch shell –

webs out from the body

a kind of destruction

for all who float

weighted with venule

too bewitched {in silk

too lulled} in patterns of filament.

*from Jack Spicer’s After Lorca.

Ballad of Conjure

Pluck the dark

from behind a billion eyelids

paint sky with echoing

empty is not in the night

how the belly stores

clears space and spins

a womb happens without eyes

without candelabras

burning – here

in the calloused tufts

of skin below the ankles

of skin below the wrists

magic firing in furrows

cut in veined grooves

where all fruit as fruit

bears fruit. Sow

bulbs (plant us

all) and ovum (oh,

silkworm mother)

in wonder:

the frailest cocoon

swarms deep. What burns

boldest in the night

is the night.

A ghost's sagacity of

everything thimble