The Healing Loom

I set to work on the healing loom I let the loom-weights fall I let 
     the loom-weights stutter.
In the dark they spoke indifferently about suffering.
In the dark they may have been something else entirely but I was 
     not with them in the dark.
I washed my face it was morning the flowers like flayed hands. 
Whose hands I thought and who would flay them.
Instead one by one the birds arrived their eyes cracking like tiny 
     seeds.
The healing loom had grown silent because you see I was dis-
     tracted I kept prompting fate.
Fate you have forgotten your lines I hissed fate you need to talk 
     to the director.
So fate left me and lumbered off to some green hills.
I grasped the shuttle in my hand it was a very good shuttle an 
     antique you might say.
I felt it knew my hand the contours of my hand either flayed or 
     unflayed (unflayed today).
I moistened the weft with a little milk yesterday’s milk as I’d 
     been taught.
Outside the birds were nerves in a cylinder made of meat they 
     made joyful noises.
Letters foaming at the site of the amputation like sap from a tree 
     on fire a cherry maybe,
they spit and thrum. Whole days pass like this.
How God penetrates the baffles of matter with His nonmatter is 
     my study.
I sleep beneath the loom as it more or less precisely covers the 
     extent of my physical body
even though it is never quite dark here it is never quite night.
This is the pattern I intend to execute on the healing loom: the 
     house set on fire.
You see the skeins of flax crimson citrine taupe that I’ve been 
     provided with how charming.
What I like best are the shadows they cast from their pegs on the 
     wall.
I sit at the healing loom and contemplate these shadows for 
     much of the day.
Day being the garment fate shed almost carelessly it seemed as it 
     stumbled blind into form.

Read more from Issue 19.2.