from Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners
*
Do not force
it is
wives
Fertility
of couples interlock
to
have a body
*
Of many women’s
invisible careers
to animals as they
are supposed to be
set-aside confidence
in one’s own body
Blood runs all
over
this century
grown from none
Painted birds
anywhere over flaws
disembodied
violet
beaming knife
ossuary
This sensible
experience of boundary
vestige of landscape
To be mistress if
only of a small tent
This century
grown from none
to ask how rare
peculiar
undisturbed
to my own hopes
Do not force
all
the stuffing
a skin
will hold
who
cleanup
the
work room
collections
of arguments
rationalize
the randomness of fatality
conditions
of existence
or
probabilities of life
*
Of many women’s
invisible careers
to animals as they
are supposed to be
set-aside confidence
in one’s own body
Sarah Mangold is a NEA fellow and
the author of the recent chapbook Birds I
Recall (above/ground press). Her full length collections include Giraffes of Devotion (Kore Press), Electrical Theories of Femininity (Black
Radish Books), and Household Mechanics (New Issues), selected by C.D. Wright
for the New Issues Poetry Prize. She lives near Seattle where she founded and
edited the print journal Bird Dog: a
journal of innovative writing and art.