Margaryta Golovchenko, Two Poems

10 / Cups // Wheel of Fortune

In the drum of a polished washing machine

a rabbit is kicking, not out of free will

or fear. This is often mistaken to be a hunger for freedom.

He kicks to set his world

off-axis, for a new perspective that all living things experience

before the brain is de-wired. 

Put your hand in the mouth

that has bitten

and never prayed for forgiveness after. 

Wrap a finger 

around each of the canines

and admire their sharpness, the elongated form

which somewhere someone has considered phallic,

has justified death with but it pulses

exactly like love.

That is not how the rabbit sees the whirling hands

of metal, the drumbeat that outjumps

the internal tempo. For him this is a lottery 

over what the owners get to keep —

white tuft and a story to go with it

or a tiny paw promising to do away with repetition.

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10 / Wands

For the past three days

I have been dreaming of the forest

of people

places

selves I have been told to carry 

with me

because one day someone might need it,

might ask to slip it on like a second skin,

try living in it and dancing to its breathing

or wear it like a coat one only wears in the moments

when the senses stutter and go looking to the mind for explanation.

Now in a forest of entities

bodies

materials

space

I look at framed flowers on the wall —

small patches of marsh and grassland, the darkness

of the dinner table right before a family is cleaved

— wondering how well their neat geometries

would slot into my holes

let x be the number of internal wounds

and y the number of external; let z

equal total collateral damage to the surroundings

because no roots come up not tangled