For Cassandra
Hannah Keene

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here i am, calling for you
[a believer in ]

this body.
this basket.
mouthed door a gap.
(i told you so) only harvests so much fruit.

hindsight: this is now a burnt orchard winter.

a siblyl must rely on the future and speak.
this door must open only to the turn of the past.
the fortune must be in this basket, this body.
cassandra, i am a maker of yesteryears’ prophet

i am on the arctic flower drift beach—
it is all amber,
those morals encased in sand
a mouthful of this:
keep my teeth from letting out.
synched tongue in tone—word for word
our lips touch lips, those of our keeper.

         o, Apollo—

you shaking scared sparrow,
all toneless and condemned.
eat all the fruit in our arms—silver guilt and ready.
each grape picked for you,
each pomegranate broken before your feet.

a lie gives a lie a bed to sleep in.
this moon is rising backward and i am awake,
my basket empty, my tongue swollen shut.

o, Cassandra!
this responsibility
this artifact
an empty room in my arms,
that flowered beach thawing in golden ruin.