Take a mattress. Put it in our woods.  

Art by Victoria Parker

Poetry by Kristin Withers

how it is you have found yourself within 

               me; found you out – antlers scuttling raw 

               around the lake, 

               again & again, a determination 

found in my pacing, so that 

               looming in the floral spores before their teething 

churned bit by bit & lived in – I have 

been in you, 

               one referent & oscillating twilight

of the symmetries we are authors 

               nacreous not recreant

the first folders of wedding dress & sewists 

of mudded foul & too, 

               the congenital dowry  

an exercise in every 

               djinn in fugue & moving 

root; confession – even in turning 

from me – when I was both     

contractual & of plasticity –  being both  

               there and feeling, 

               our imbued room (trespassed) 

as I returned —

               sanguine & slept in 

               having unbecome you & been menstruous

I used my hands & still the sea 

rich in silver chevron & no smell 

               to remember, how it would no longer reveal itself

               (but these disobedient 

               salivas —showing themselves & collating)

but mistook a the cadence of a quest for a guest 

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