by Madeline Vardell

issue 62

She dreams she is with the dough man.
The folds of her skin fan out in pleats.
She gathers the selves in great armfuls.
Up her middle finger she walks
like lifting the skirt.
She eats and expands like bare lava.
His handsome face forms the icing
on a cake. A red dot seeps and swirls
that makes nude to pink.
Penetration as if from a spiraled sheet—
by hands of ghosts.
She is sleeping.
She was a dried prune. 
Now she is Must Spit. She is spitting grapes. 
Dreams are toothless old women. 
Purple hair, bones and arthritis.
Always, she wanders the streets
to his house.