Widow Lane

‘So, you live in the treehouse,’
The widow said. 

Floating in the branches,
it hangs on axonometric threads. Pendulous in the wind,
tossing contents left and right, in the bedroom garden, in the mortuary kitchen

a thick chipped white cup slips 
reaching up, and opens the
oak cabinets. 

The alabastrine glass, cracking on the Brazilian Jasper Verde marble,
shattering into a swarm of shivs that rebound from the counter and stab into my wrists leaving
deep 
puncture wounds, eclosion,
lined with silk cocoons, and little mossy brown moths, flutter out one by one to nest lace
loopings, noose-like plaits twisting on the ceiling, leaving a trail of blood
clustered. chaparral.

The pieces of milk glass rise, silicates, into a cloud of spiny edges and surge,
racing after, gouging the body in
leather punched holes of flesh skiving beautiful symbols
of karma cursed
antimony, 
calcium bone ash, 
translucent opaline glass 
reflections tranquil
swaying in the branches.

The cups 
butchering me
‘again tomorrow,’
the widow said.

***

Naomi Simone Borwein holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Newcastle; she teaches at the University of Windsor. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming across a spectrum of publications: Ghost City Review, HWA Poetry Showcase IX (featured poet), Ghostlight The Magazine of Terror, Beautiful Tragedies III, Farside Review, Superpresent Magazine, Soliloquies Anthology, and elsewhere. Naomi is a past head poetry editor of Swamp Writing (2018-2022)--and a reader for Thanatos Review. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.