Aleah Sato


Wing bones


She dissolves into the radio’s transmission –
It’s sugar in the coffee, muddy boots in the kitchen.
Ignores the sound of mice in the basement,
their constant chewing. She points her father's
shotgun down the stairs, but the mice are still
there -- the man who came for supper
and never left. He holds a bottle and a smile
spent on Sunday. Living here with two sisters,
babies on floorboards : tobacco and sweat –
secrets holding hate to the back of the neck,
the kiss - the swallow’s nest.


The Good Dream

You are Pegasus dipping wings in a clear pool.
Under a blanket, I touch the bare sun.
My hand, neither burnt
Nor melting - I flicker the yellow dominion.
Turning back, you are the cool night,
The Joseph star rising first and last
As I follow. Such comfort is the muddled dawn.

You are the plum and the blackbird,
The purple violets of proximity.
From my side, a plucked wing.
Lady in the woods leans into darkness.
Her nightingale cacophony shuts out the lights.
Listen to the dreams and sighs of children.
My head on this pillow, o husband of lullabies and mirrors


The Oath

I have made many promises. Between continents
my alibis have become alibis. I try to be good.
Even disease has a cure, but my wanting
has its own crimes. I fly on pure gluttony -
at times, speak tongues for fools. Uncomforted
in Heaven; the angel songs sound dull.

I have made poison for love - searched the
dark woods for the horned god.
What hands can keep such a thing underneath
the stinging skin – I have been
curled like light on the Devil’s moon –
too soon to make babies or pretense.

In us, a pure plan of running –
Running onto highways, into fields
where corn blooms taller than our heads,
and lost are our complications. Friend,
tell me you don’t see what I am seeing :
the smoke & all our lies screaming
alive in the flames


Topeka

All you've ever wanted : the firefly and
the wind, the big realm where
possibility dwells, the parade of motors.
Snow falls on our field. You are out there,
lining the horizon, a figure smoking -
watching the whirls of garbage burning
into the sky. When do you fit into
a life, cradle the corn and the hammer
like they are starlets batting false eyelashes
in a stupid state, always sunshine,
always - Do we see the same lives
twinkle and shine, or have your
hands fallen the way mine have fallen,
to the pets, the comb, and later. Watching
traffic from the kitchen table. It is cold again.
You come in and kiss my hair, say
goodnight. Just goodnight