Marry me moon on a country road in July's luminescent dust where fireflies orgy over a stretch of corn and your smell of half light breaks through the grasses parts me open devours marry me like this like a firefly absolute in everyone else's darkness Reprinted with permission Copyright © 2005 by Amy Plettner-Lind

FEMALE by Amy Plettner-Lind

We were both the genitalia of slender beardtongue, and left the male part of ourselves in some fragrant corner of our mothers and fathers. This is why the shape of richness is so inherent in our lips. We have all been raped one way. When attempts were made on our girlish bodies our fathers would not cry for us. We walked sideways in the depths of summer. Our breasts had nothing left. We gathered blackberries in the foothills, our hands tossed out any dry shirveled fruit. When our baskets swelled we clung to them. Where our grandmothers had grown tired we learned to swim in the shadows of the river a force that caused snowmelt in spring to flow back up the mountains. Reprinted with permission Copyright © 2005 by Amy Plettner-Lind

TREE HOUSE by Amy Plettner-Lind

Plywood and two by fours nailed in a live oak. Butte Creek Canyon steeped in moonlight. Cicadas vibrate the chapparral. Poison oak sleeps low under manzanita. Uria + Mattie in a carved heart. Smoke up a chimney. Reprinted with permission Copyright © 2005 by Amy Plettner-Lind

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