There is an actress who always plays the dark parts in my dreams handcuffed to the moon with black seams in her stockings asking me to paint her behind the scenes in the fifty-est shades of red you've ever seen.
I listened to the iron rooster spinning in the wind wondering who would climb the roof and take him in, or would he roost with strangers in the house
It was so cold the chicken water froze over
The women made coffee and the men went out to the shed to look over the tools
No one would sit in her black chair because it was a bear that might wake up anytime
She died in the middle of the night
The doctor said her heart blew out like a jar of preserves
Before dawn I laid my head on the hard couch by the cast iron stove and heard her coming down the stairs with her cane and her teeth in a glass on the way to the outhouse saying *Who took my flashlight?