Claire Marie Stancek

Rose

a swollen smell ruptures the spumy vessel           paining edge
rose-like         rose chewing

for would the rose not chew as a smell as   passively as the rose itself is smelled
rose flowers fester on branches and festering fall

and one adhered     here “rose bruise” you diagnosed     sonorous surgeon
rose bloom fell on her hands 

together prest fell as light from glass     as stains and stained
and where they fell the petals stayed

amethyst porphyry vermillion        veins flush and flood shallow skin
words to chew up and blow bubbles of     bubbles of this 

sudden a rose came like a full-blown thought,
flushing her brow, and in her pained heart

made purple riot     in hale
the unfurling of the page too is a bloom and you 

blew it   what fruit is this     smell of flesh and flower
carving at the skins of one another bleeding out   incredible color   flushed twilight 

okay splendid garland     lift the petal and hear it spread
from her hand with the soft snapping of spitbubbles in an old man’s mouth 

lift the petal and you will see a spreading web and the color of rot
and a little spider spinning spinning

Root

root, rote, rowt, wrote, rout, ruitt, writ.

To cast a spell, esp. a harmful one, effected by the magical properties of certain roots. Remember & still : remember. Bound // beyond law. In the ground, we turned around around by the snout. There in muck & marl we formed a hole by rooting. Dark with damp and full of roots. To disturb, disarrange. Where were you searching. Where kicking or striking forcefully. Up by the roots. [                 ] Died out completely.

Root

tree mouths reach        slow intent while intent remains still

distorted by earthy glut     legion    mouths distended 

in embodied dark     legion        rifling massy depths

on an alien scale     a season a moment a blind blunt plying 

in the spongy regions of potentiality

the body     body of water         human what thirst could drain you

mouths of sinewy silence    mood of the whole meal    

in the shade of spicy silver leaves

what message did you carry and polish under your tongue 

all your life     into     and out of     age    

it turned to seawater and seeped into the walls 

and now this tree     drinks of it       mouths hanging    open in

heavy bodied dark and monstrous toil 

to be     newly monstrous     rooted in    tooth flesh     

long and long          drinking the water of you       

that is what came     sink now     slower

Wind

wind, wend, went, wand, want, wound.

As a thing devoid of sense or perception, unaffected by what one does to it. A gap, hole, hollow. What breath spoke & what sounded musical instruments : life. Among the supernatural beings what haunted us//  [angels, demons, fabulous creatures, dragons, griffins]. Decay, as it slips in w ruin & rot. Like, the fact that a person is not present // absent. Under twining plants, whose shadows cast hollow bone dice onto the floor before us : a plight, a knot, a braid. Let those of you who wind, take your twisted way. & those of us who wind : make oaths, strong exclamations. Cold air pours from their beaks. To wrap (a corpse) in a shroud : out of breath. Freq. in passive. With immaterial objects. 

Wind 

Hear the air      weighting           ice air         where
can one turn     but in air through air
Hear it now           weirdly wilted        saplings snapping

It began as                             a wind a wind      
clapping dead against window panes winding nerves
Only the dead can sleep in electric lament                    it said as they slept
dreaming silver spools that wound

scooping shattered limp lunged wound          an old
form of cold       shaping in air                figures who shimmer and fall

Even in our caves                 it reached us           through drafts      cracks
its smell        grainy               gray bread          felling the breathers
the young          rushing red             silver clacking trees