Submissions by Bayleigh

for Neill

April, 2006

My body is at it again,
ever-demanding like a man,
yet I’ve never felt more like a moon -
the way it folds into the sky,
examining itself before refleshing.
I am so greedy with my body,
too greedy with my light.

I went to the beach at night,
unfurled the sand, the wet grey
unveiling a whiter, dryer earth.
A bony finger wrote: yes, this is me.
My cells, my sickness, semiotic things
telling me what to want.
What coral. What misnomer.
What jellyfish bubbling up
its medusa – a gelatinous bell...

Like an uncertain baby, you walk,
gangly, lumpy in your flesh, turning
feet inward. I think you belong
somewhere else, some lighter body,

aerodynamic maybe. Maybe atomically
small, drifting through the room,
flicking between your Civil War
books, shrinking into the memory

picture of me, enraged on your big lap,
looking through the black and white
as you recall the vastness of the field
and fat bullets scurrying like mice

into your bones. Found their home.
You weren’t born, I remind you,
and stare into the fireplace, the...