Saint Monica of the Thaw

No, they would never find her under the ice
like a lost scarf snowed away for months
and replaced. There would be no need to
donate her record collection to the library
or avoid her bedroom window after dusk.
She would never stare up at the rafters
for any other reason than to spot bats
exiting through the base of a ceiling fan.

In fact, she didn't even know the cold,
had to lie when friends asked about her
bare legs under a kilt, the muslin slips
she slept in, her windows always cracked
in January while the rest were huddled,
hot bricks at their toes. When she fell
into the icy river, she climbed right out
on her own, before a teacher and a rope

somersaulted down the crusted ledge.
Monica did not even peel off her coat
before untangling Miss Nells, brushing
the snow from her pincurls, flipping her
skirt back over her knees. How did she
keep quiet about the dingy pantalets, red
garter hidden under all that wool, the way
the rope knotted itself around them both?



Habeas Corpus

They shaved your face with wire
and left you in a sheetless bed
beneath raw wood rafters,

like a soldier or a gunman
dragged in from the highway,
posed in front of the charcoal

of a sketch artist. How did she
draw you as your head bobbed
between pillow and mattress

with a cavalcade of pigeons
as witness? Fingernails cut down
to stubs and the paper dampening

with humidity, bodies, a sky seen
through slats when sails passed
or flags broke their ropes.

All the brown glass in the lake
could not pare through the slack
eyes of an officer in dusty coveralls

guarding the door. The sketch artist
wore gray wool and garters, and you
felt the fibers stretch around elastic

like a bandana circling your skull,
back to childhood days of rail cars,
girls in the stagnant light of afternoon.