Lisa Allen Ortiz

A bedtime story about Bluebeard
all the wives on meat hooks
...

All night I dreamed of coyotes.
The cat went missing before bed
and I slept fretful for her delicate bones
...

Some people wake up
and cannot remember
their own names. They forget
...

What's the difference
between this stuff and sand?
Here, the collector said and handed
...

Because it is Sunday
and because I had to go
when I was a child and because
I sold my soul to God
...

My children stopped eating
when we moved to this country.
...

At dinner I lean in close.
I say: The ventriloquist's heart has eight chambers.
His blood lurches from one to the other. I am trying
...

Bird perches in the strings of flesh
and sings of the dead.
What we all do.
...

If we had one, I said, we could grow lettuce and peas
pumpkins and greens. In the winter we'd have beets,
green garlic and parsnips for soup. I'd get a few chickens
...

Baby, since we moved here, a jungle
has grown up the topography of my ankles—
wee sylvan leaves, tiny blooms of pink,
...

Fortune spasms his stomach; telling
cramps his obliques, gastric juices
and lymph. He throws voices
...

The buzz and hum
of rising, throttle,
instruments, and look:
...

After sunset their lanterns blinked
skimming the place
where the sea left a mirror
...

Mornings here, I put my French on: underthings, white blouse, a tight skirt.
I dress letter by letter, I wear my accent comme ci.
...