Lake With Many Rooms
 
Always distraction—         the “you”         the desire object
 
                  as in you enter like a crushed flower of a person             perfuming
                                                                                                                                  like an enormous lake light
 
                  this hungry chamber and my ledge         deranged with sun
 
                                                                                                              desrengier literally to move from orderly rows
 
in my thin orange robe those sparkling parties       where I knife
                  through rooms looking for someone to sleep with
 
                  where the you       steadies my hip in the shower
                                      touches beneath my tongue with his thumb
 
                                                                                                                                  or in flaming reams curls into obsession
                                                                                                            a gold animal       I want her to tell me what to do
 
                                                                                                                                  then upon my waking the desire object
                                                          like a sliver of dark bitter light
 
or an envelope flat of air       and trying       to remember what I wanted to remember       there was
 
                                                                                                              perhaps a message I was meant to receive
 
what I mean to say is       these kinds of dreams happen sometimes when I am lonely
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To Reject This System Would Require Another System
 
A spontaneous moon necessitates its own rules
 
then the disorienting orange dusk
 
the exit only illuminated when cut from the lack of an exit
 
in preparation a woman embroiders her own disruption
 
transfigures into     a manic light     the most direct form of herself
 
the new structurelessness ranges almost mammalian
 
every city has always hosted this low hum
 
but now no longer theory     we are required
 
to accept what we did not think we could
 
a match strikes     a match strikes     a match strikes
 
the unraveling is what     but when and how
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, ANSLEY CLARK now lives and teaches in Colorado. Her work has been published in the Colorado Review, the Black Warrior Review, Sixth Finch, Diagram, Typo, Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Geography (2015) is available from dancing girl press.