firm as a fresh pack of cigarettes 

gutted like matchsticks cracked into
glistening licorice ash or obsidian
shrapnel snagged on the pilled-up
tongue of an overwrought childhood
chewn into mood rings moaning like
marrow and coconut husks groomed
into some shrike’s crutch; slumped
 
(how the echo of Iowans, slathered
 in flattering cornsilk gowns, now elbowing
 macaroni ragamuffins back to the doom-
 riddle, labyrinth stench of lye-caulked cauldrons
 shouldering joists of a moldering hen house,
 cat house, mad house, laboring general
 assemblies auguring just what shapes
 some chance desperation must dare
 take up in these trying times)—here,
 
tucked in minding the moon creep, bleating 
but bead by bead above slavering eaves
cinched silly with icicles, stretch-marked
traces, blushed at the breast or
crest, found floundering, gilt and
embarrassed, bent under the bustling 
slingshot sprig of a locust tree stuttering,
clenching its fingers to rickets, just
trying to cling to it, shrill as a scar
sloughed, spilt as a shadow slips
under the buckling wall—the moon
in full here, whispering, pregnant, 
twee little lichens threshed, thrust fresh
from a tuning fork’s gullet, that
gingerly squeeze through the ruffled-up
scrunch of some weeks-old snow grown
gold as the spring-wove copperhead burst
from a featherweight nut tin, tingling,
sick with a forest’s potential—the moon
blown molten, now, slithering, shrinking,
stuttering, daring to do with your days what
worms churn up from the undulous gunk
of a body dumped, only yesterday, groping
 
of brailling appraisals of goose-pimpled
flesh pinned jauntily over the over-wrought
bones of a frantic frame pinched proud
of eternity, wadded-up shadows of self
flexed thick at the folds as silvery scars
are emboldened, redoubled, their dread-
cocked heads tucked over, like cockbead
blotting a penitent fissure, like cockbead
broods atop cracked, stack-laminate scabs—
 
but cigarette-tender bones like snow-slopped
ash now, pinched to what forms wet fingers 
fancy, dabbling, cats at play in the berth 
of some comely girl slumped gurgling
chords of a curse or surds some sacred
tree sloughs shyer than snow
slips over but bristling snow
and the icicles swoln into tenuous
                 shins and pillars and
                                   penitent
                                   patience