Peggy Munson's book Pathogenesis is out from Switchback Books, 2008. Munson is the author of the novel, Origami Striptease, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She also edited the anthology, Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She has also been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, and Cottages at Hedgebrook. A native of Normal, IL, she now lives in Massachusetts.
Sleeping on the Edge of the Prairie
I am sure the panic grass has a language of gestures.
I am sure the wild horses of forced surrenders
Have run and bled in the knives of green.
One day we will be meaninglessly touching
And adrenaline will feel like catastrophic rain.
I will restrain my wheaten waves of fatuous hair
From that sickle of yesterdays
And keep fire in such fine capillaries
Where its filaments resemble careless candles tipped.
I have wandered the nights of tremulous projectors
Looking for your nightmares.
I am sure the panic grass has a language of gestures
Surreal children who want to hide in each other's sleep
And those who shirk away and bend in waves
And those who find old hands in floral wallpaper
Entrapped in their parental planetarium.
Loved ones, you are loved ones;
Do not worry in the wind and rain.
Watch as time gains on memory in the flickering race
And the relegated prairie flourishes anyway.
Welcome to your Ball-jar terrarium
And your inherited circulation, children,
You of the obscuring grass and gesture;
Welcome to your hapless ecosystem
And the bend of lithe figures in the shadowy moon.
Let green regrow your stolen tissue
With the ambrosia of the plants and their native names,
Because blood is in your ground,
Blood is feeding the muddy seep
After the autumn fires, after you love,
After you sleep.
One day we will be meaninglessly touching
And adrenaline will feel like catastrophic rain.
I will restrain my wheaten waves of fatuous hair
From that sickle of yesterdays
And keep fire in such fine capillaries
Where its filaments resemble careless candles tipped.
I have wandered the nights of tremulous projectors
Looking for your nightmares.
I am sure the panic grass has a language of gestures
Surreal children who want to hide in each other's sleep
And those who shirk away and bend in waves
And those who find old hands in floral wallpaper
Entrapped in their parental planetarium.
Loved ones, you are loved ones;
Do not worry in the wind and rain.
Watch as time gains on memory in the flickering race
And the relegated prairie flourishes anyway.
Welcome to your Ball-jar terrarium
And your inherited circulation, children,
You of the obscuring grass and gesture;
Welcome to your hapless ecosystem
And the bend of lithe figures in the shadowy moon.
Let green regrow your stolen tissue
With the ambrosia of the plants and their native names,
Because blood is in your ground,
Blood is feeding the muddy seep
After the autumn fires, after you love,
After you sleep.
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