No Return Address
i.
For God while sleeping,
said the poet to the analyst
from the garden.
Kind sir: these woods,
where I live
in this honorable House of the Laurel Tree
with mercy for the greedy
in the deep museum
I remember
the road back;
the loss ingredient;
some foreign letter.
The Maiden without hands
consorting with angels,
to lose the earth
again and again and again;
it is a spring afternoon
wanting to die
just once.
ii.
Killing the spring—
Angels of the love affair:
the assassin
the addict
the stand-ins
Angels of blizzards and blackouts:
the hoarder
the one-legged man
the other
Angels of fire and genitals:
the furies,
how we danced
the fury of cocks
when man enters woman
the fury of beautiful bones
the fury of abandonment
iii.
Rowing
the room of my life:
the dead heart
now,
the fire thief.
I remember,
the locked doors
keeping the city
ghosts.
Lullaby:
All my pretty ones,
the falling dolls
there you were
a curse against elegies
praying on
a love letter
written in a burning building.
iv.
The operation:
When the glass of my body broke,
the division of parts,
the abortion. The lost lie.
This cento is sourced from Anne Sexton’s titles in The Complete Poems, Mariner Books (1999).
Ava C. Cipri is a poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of Disability Literature & Art. In her sister life she is a Reiki practitioner, belly dancer, dog trainer and collector of tarot decks. Ava holds an MFA from Syracuse University and currently teaches writing at Duquesne University. Ava’s poetry and nonfiction appears or is forthcoming in Cimarron, decomP magazinE, The Fem, Rust + Moth, and The Yellow Chair Review, among others.
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