Household Fires
       

First we burn the formal dresses, then a
boa of pale white feathers.

Sulfur, somewhere.

Canute, the Viking king of England
rises out of the carpet—

he places his throne in the sea
but cannot stop the tide.

Five texts
exhumed by
human
breath.

Three platters of hard and nutty cheese.

(Insisting, at parties, that all
children fly in dreams.)

Someone is coming,
possibly
in a chariot.

Also,
the wolves
that raised us
whelp another
litter.

I am divested, the first
sign of smoke.
Refreshed by cookery.
The blue list is short.

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Copyright © 2016 Jenny Drai All rights reserved
from Wine Dark
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission