Page 99 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue2

My fingers smear silt on the medical records

as vagabond seeds fall from my cuffs

into manila folders

to incubate in the intermittent midnight

of file cabinets

My night-­‐damp footprints sprout mushrooms

in the pale carpet of the dayroom

I speak in birdsong and confuse the program

Notes:

Each evening I walk next to the river in order to ground and nourish myself. I sense the healing

presence of this wild strip of land that holds the water, and want to carry that presence within me,

onto the locked psychiatric unit where I work. My desire is to sow seeds of wildness in a setting that

often equates conformity and compliance with healing. This piece arrived through allowing the myriad

voices of the river corridor to speak through my imagination. It is equal parts waking dream and

manifesto.

Prey

There is a silent music

A thrumming twine

of fear and desire

that calls the hunter

to stalk the wolf

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