The Plum-Stone Game

Kathleen Jesme

Two from
I will not let thee go except thou bless me

Speak to me fidelities: a shift of traitors each its own
rhyme, each a secret kept discreet. One for the
spackles of light the leaves change, one for the sheets
of fragments. But while she was away, monstrous
hounds grew from her thoughts, tracking. She missed
the feeding. Is it a garden if she didn’t interfere is it a
garden if it cannot be left? Now she sees people
canting and wants to turn, awry.

~

Shall we examine betrayal? The small lesions on
the skin that begin as ordinary. Try casting them off
into the wind. It grows its yellow seeds, scales of fish,
feathers and fly wings. Pinch them. Today’s business
is obedience. She couldn’t see anything but green
from the window and the green made her wild.
Make an application to submission. Who would write
the music?