IRENE

Marc Jampole

In a rain from which summer will never recover
a coo of bleeding sap, a barking solfege
blinding her petrels and puffins.

The stubborn way that she makes love,
swollen river flooding farmlands, growing weaker,
frozen chaos bouncing off the insides of a beaker.

Her husky bellows to her mirror
mutely grow within her head:
I was born below a charcoal sun, 

one of those girls
who everyone wants to bleed to death
dreaming the life of a ghost among the weeds.