POSSESSION

Caught in the folds
of a mid-winter morning.
Up above
the gods are coyly spreading
their ancient disease.

Oh, how it stings to want,
to extend a pale hand
with the carved wrist down.
The ecstasy of hours
passing deep into night.
The sound of a conscience
taking flight.
As the wine is sipped,
smiles exchanged,
as another lover is satisfied
on the shadowed garden lane,
bacteria spreads to the scalp,
circles the ankles
of the corpse.
It was always like this-
Florid magicians
embracing their doves,
their swords,
their dancing girls
cut into halves.
And now,
anything to see them,
my lovers of knives
and the naive.

 

SILENT PICTURES

At dawn
I am stitched
Three times over.
Hands commanding me
To heal, to love,
To rise and live.
Eat from the bird-less Summer,
From the solitary Winter.
I bury all of my love letters
Like stiff, dry frogs.
Throw trinkets, sheets,
Clothes out the window
That settle through the seasons,
Fractals of life
Meshing with earth.
Like everything half-forgotten
They are washed of detail
And sterilized.
But what of the baby
In the woods, sunk
In a pile of leaves?
What of the baby doll
I left to the birds
Whose blue eyes were as brilliant
As the Aegean Sea,
Whose mouth was clean
Of all history?
Baby, like all else,
Hungry jaws
Have dislocated you.
These words like a sea
Of black garland
Try to resurrect you.

 

TOUCHING THE WOUND

The September after you died
I slept 310 nights
without passion,
the music box leaking
Moonlight Sonata.
Touching the wound constantly
became a habit.
Looking for your face
in the scars
was a holy ritual.
It was a dream that told me
where to find you,
standing erect
between two cypress trees
on Ruby Hill,
your face white as stars.
Unnatural breath,
bloodless and lost
with no idea
of who I was.
My holy wish gone awry.

 

LITURGY


HERE IS THE CHURCH

At the screen of confession
where not even a mosquito
could fit through
I tell the priest
I am tarnished,
and in the garden
where the striped snake hissed
I broke a mirror
when we kissed.
And afterward I climb the tower
to where the great bell
rings on Sunday
in the early hours.
The scent of blood red roses rising,
These are
Mary's favorite flowers

HERE IS THE STEEPLE

Lonely crow,
black as the devil's breast,
you nest inside me.
You murder here,
you defecate,
you fill my silence with raw gust.
You carry your messages
from here to hell
and dream a solitary lust.
But I
was built for holiness.

HERE IS THE GRAVEYARD

Yawning each time
a soul is lifted.
Drawers full of regret and dust.
Mausoleum brimming
with disjointed lovers
and animal bones
and gold and gold
and diamonds and gold.

With my cypress,
stone saints
and endless names,
I am a halfway house for the dead.
Sooner or later
you will nestle at my breast.
Here is the church,
here is the steeple,
here is the graveyard
full of forgotten people.

 

Nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, Corrine De Winter's poetry, fiction, essays and interviews have appeared worldwide in publications such as the The New York Quarterly, Imago, Phoebe, Plainsongs, Yankee, Sacred Journey, Interim, The Chrysalis Reader, The Lucid Stone, Fate ,Press, Sulphur River Literary Review, Modern Poetry, The Lyric, Atom Mind, The Writer, The Lyric and over 800 other publications. She has been the recipient of awards from Triton College of Arts & Sciences, Writer's Digest, The Esme Bradberry Award, The Madeline Sadin Award, The Rhysling Award, and has been featured in Poet's Market 1995-2006. Her work is featured in the much praised collections Bless the Day, Heal Your Soul, Heal the World, Get Well Wishes, Essential Love, The Language of Prayer, Mothers And Daughters and in Bedside Prayers, now in its 18th printing.