As Close As I Can Come

Stuck in a land of metaphor
word constellations constantly
changing what the earth
will not take back:
one barbed heart against another,
against the stone inside.

All those loose threads
patched, repatched,
impossible to match
at the seams.

Inevitably, answers about what to do
wait to detonate at each misstep,
forming me to myself, slack-jawed
with cravings for the cocoon
of games only two can play:

to turn on a single axis
until, bodies still undulating,
the dark snatches us away.


A found poem by Mary Bast, revived from
Janice Moore Fuller's collection, Sex Education

Before the Gulls Take Me Out

I have lost my map,
numb as the moon,
half wondering if April
will bring me to life.

To keep from going mad
I'll be a knife waiting,
a wolf at a live heart,
voice like a boulder,

before earth opens,
a wound,
Death looking on
with a casual eye.


A found poem by Mary Bast, revived from
Anne Sexton's collection, The Awful Rowing Toward God.