Iphigenia the Night Before (Dream to Electra)

I'm not anything but crushed mustard
skin and onion pelts lifted
from my fingerprints. I instigate
berries popping out like nipples and kisses, the tiny
herons flying out of our eye, the swell

if globes in our tongue. I am the shape of abdomens
dropping from our ears. I'm not anything
but the beginning of stone
from spattered pebles and glue, the sparks
that burned freckles in our

arms. So also I'm ees sweating in palms or
the crackled lips around toes. If these toes push
into my hand like spoons,
then moon shoots cut
these green cuticle threads and hollows

of old wheat. We
have this in mind for decay, the canines
through a jaw, the swallowing of fat earbones. We have
xylophone colors pressed into our skin, in the napes
of our armpits. We drink from our thumbs and would

pretend to give swelling bellies ideas about coins
flat against the bed of our mouth. Our father

doesn't love this in us, but
I love my own demise. It is the beginning of
yelling down the white brown arms of the sun. The dust
spills out my mouth vomiting in spots like dirt rain
which mourns with that dank glow -- wet trees

sprouting on mounds. Those trees lope
in the night with knolled throats, solid marrow
skin. Because of spit widening in mouths, I've come
to know pear see teeth. I've been
sick all night with those blue melon skies, his fingers

clawing unto themselves, the knowledge of opening
above you.


-- published in So to Speak, A Feminist Journal of Language and Art (Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 1992)

Copyright Louise Robertson