Sleep


            Juice bottle flooded with butts and rolling over
            the pierced throat of the mattress in Debts exhaustion
            was Wire-lit moraine through psyche's garbled alleys
            was Scattered text floored by light through broken blinds
            leaves and room-crags the floodbed's offense at self
insistent I-siren a Post-fern bell tolling Give up Get up Time.



            Get up bound into this billboard carry your It
            This That Words Hairless waikiki instructs desire
            what One More is too much Now "sexpressive". . ."poet"?
            Take me over Cup me slip Lip into my wings
            Lover me swallow you Crouched on their capital
the Vulvas Glaciers Tundral stems now equal to bus-lines bound for __?



            Lies roll over Lit Which memory's sufficient
            to smoke Love choking on the need to reconstruct
            Fuck Fetus Agent Orange Orchid Orinoco
            Baht Border Sniper Tea Patzcuaro or Pindar
            Late in the Moon of Popping Trees Dakota creek. . .
Late in the moon. . .Late. . .ping trees da. . .ta. . .scalp this trophy word and eat it.



            Mythical swills spread eagle terror Reams and sheets
            Manifest cold telecommunicates screen jerk
            Ax hurled through scaffold Brink night brother suicide
            To continent Stretched tether Market reservoirs
            Intravenous Yangtze Mekong Mad Six tap cracked
Chords lick cull throat to snow Falling to snow hushed whole hands reach to whispers.



            Dawn breaks the Dawn breaks on hummingbirds and alleys
            War-weary Sudanese streaming into Egypt
            The city strewn Here on this dank carpet Let me news
            you Let me cruise the blue flame of you or shatter
            if not here No Place Left No breath lift No sleep drift
To Re-mind, yes, not Rip a barren land's denuded sticks to safety.



Bio: Laura Elrick currently lives in San Francisco. She has traveled widely, and has recently returned from Japan where she taught for two years.

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