Martha Zweig

The cold orange hands of the
salamanders still wrap and
unwrap the baby he dreams he was
...

Skis underfoot, I was playing at remuda-
just in my ears, at first, because, stride
for stride, the leathery snow
...

Evening: the ruler settles upon the roost.
All day long we made this much peace. The rest
of the raw material left in the world
...

I stood security the first six weeks.
Nobody minded the moon. The sun
you could reason with. Other
...

Dire symptom, to wake up
in a headache, plus I forget what it's of.
Afflictions' placebos rev & throb down neural
...

Mother & father I once had had a child once:
she escaped in the fire. They set water
boiling momentarily, tumultuous
...

Hook what you've got of skin & bones in a cut
of yellow fat at the spring pin, & spread both
opposite horizons - jaggedy jaws
...

Of that text rain is the great speaker,
from whom hush humbly
...

Nonentity's birthplace: a front yard sweeps
its dirt clean. Devil hopped up the oak tree,
devil-take-the-profit seized
a jay in the twigs by the feet, wings buffeting
...

I was just getting to that.
But first, old age.
If you could just let me finish.
...

Every so often mother
gets riverish, diversionary,
drops her day's intricates the moment
...

Chilly creek water scoots the last of the stripped
trees' rags through rocks. Underneath dark ice
minutely snowspeckled overnight,
the odd bubble of trapped air wriggles
...

In the park each spring each nondescript
tree starts up in its flowers the fruit
the Bible says you'll know it by.
...

Wet cat, long-haired tail aloft & parted in fronds,
squeezes in doorwise out of the rain, & just so I was born,
slick, quick & slipped (once) through the twice-
...

Shallows: kayak bobs me to drowse like Moses,
river-foundling. Curtsey & skim me, cordial
reeds. Divert a princess to bare her feet to
...

To be sure, those civilizations
that dicker novelties, notions, along
my original impulse would swoop
...

Can't expect too much of a person. little or no
telling why. Well enough, left alone,
tends to wander off into that scapegoat's
...

Tonight one love
courts in Andromeda.
Stars afloat like the milk
...