Bobbin lace

takes its name not
from the sea

                        where it seems

but from the small bones used like fingers
in prayers to keep holes,
bonelace
its other name:  be

__

still she knits
the sea bends

her back like the
the wind doubling
a flame this
way’s history & her hair’s

an aqueous wool
whole like land
                                                                                                           
dressing

where there’s water
her back aches

her fingers
stare into the dark
a large machine 

our throats stay warm

__

my stays are laced so tight w/
not being sure who to kill

__

sound un
sought

leaf
or leap

in error:

hei sucka

__ 

‘s a dang song
Rachel, ikke
drikke, ikke
sky.  Ikke
wet, ikke
fast ikke
du, ah
so lone

__

                                                so hold me fast

land 

__

your lacefrock
so, uh, waist-deep
and weep-vast the
better to guess you
with.  Try to
get out.  But no.

Asleepghosts opening
all my faucets:  I’m
late, I tell you, with
no time to keep running
back to what’s white
and always going on

and this damn back
of mine’s like a blind

__

First, there is no
home.  We who laughed
on what
while it snowed
the long table

aching—

we drew over it what was beautiful.

Who knows what yesterday
you ate.

How I slept once, and
you came over and the sun
was already

hot, I was naked
the sheets
crisped around my waist
I slept like Jesus and you laughed

me awake with your brass hair.

__

__

Alone I make my letters how I lake.  Haply note bay as land.  Eye latch, seaguile, ill white wools.  Fill want, waist-lack, weep-vast: your fern bed’s so ache-green to crawl-among: so creeps my, the witless want-stroke so all desiring. The wastelack for how wanting my english.  Drum lack my hold storm, dang song a looked flood of fearlock, my should half, shod hope

I want some seal legs.

__

tie a string to remember

__

X
dig
yes,  dear
here

where there’s so much water

__

even a cat could fall between

the lines are so delicate

__

green oarglass
white notepier my
foam-broad desiring
wail-lack my
droplake my
english what
wanting.  Drums
slake my
heldsong my

I want to steal some legs.

__

where & when
our eyes meet & part
laughing

__

COLD WATER: [to my bones]: Chomp! Chomp!

__

cursive!

my marrow
scrolls across the
seatop like it’s  a
birthday cake,
like it’s been
squeezed. 

__

hold where the boatstop
where they tip
the green from ferns
those water vessels
their shapes spill
my moving
tongue

__

This poem was made possible by my student's plagiarized paper [here], my trip to Tromsø, Norway, Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag and a 20 hour train ride through 24 hours of daylight.