Dancework: A Valentine

In the ocean of our bed(s) I am suddenly right.

All our mouths, (all of us), stuffed with lace.
Not echoes but chandeliers. Not bones but bliss.
I want to ward off everything
that looks at you that way.
I need to buy you a freshly killed X.

Louise Mathias is the author of Lark Apprentice, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize, Above All Else the Trembling Resembles a Forest, which won the Burnside Review Chapbook Contest, and The Traps (forthcoming from Four Way Books). She splits her time between the …

Silt

Yes, it was a kind of terror. As if fingering

the spine of a book, then finding
every page is gone.         In this admission,
children can go …

Mimeograph

Marked snow folds over the threshold.

I hedge my bets, one white pill on the tongue.
& when we

talk, it’s a kind of silent
choreography.
As animals will cluster
for their …

Mariposa de la Muerte

Pupae were placed
in the mouths of the victims.

With my back against the wall
I can see this for what it is–

the pursuit of velvet.

Louise Mathias is the author of …