My brains on the floor
Athena Nilssen

All my drapings and needs,
my 26 years, my yellowness.
Exchange of violets and bread basket dinners.
My mother, my father, my needyness.

The streets I am released
to Bay Street with its holding
only lasts the chariot-sway.
Clean horse-bit lives.

This is what I was running
for or from in that hesitation

of sound before (big raised up clatter)

Squatting in red shorts
near the TV tray.
like Leda en pointe
on a lake much too big for this City

Egylantine and runny
container of everything.
A radish in the stop light.
You are my hands, you are my sight—
The last orange light
ankle deep in Wonderland Avenue carpet
the way the turning-streets turn up here!


Down the canyon through the long long clear tape of years.

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