Bonnie MacAllister

Hoarders Make the Best Pirates

Yo-ho-ho and a pile of rut,
Governed by a few furry queens.
Count the years in albums and sevens,
Discolored by brine and old salt.

Thousands of texts guildered,
A sutler’s hatch under stairs,
Bonds mildewing on cellar seas,
Plastics and handles craft into rafts.

Epoxy the lines between baskets and shelves,
Block bandits with weeds and newspaper shanty,
Chantey yourself about mead between meetings,
Ignore the drin of telephone and port.

No quarter for you and the she-cat,
Heap the mail unopened against sill,
Fire forward fortifications
Against flow of electric stove and light.

Fair wind against the flogging by states,
Nasty notes from next door,
Live without water flow and need,
Outlive them all in folds.

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Goshen Pass

She dreamed the heat fell,
Crippled in rocks,
Shored on the slips of weight,
Floating on its own tallow.

Last night the index registered 124,
Mercury shining in drips,
Pushing the glass out,
Licking interiors vermilion with cinnabar.

She dreamed she drank beets,
Under trees slim with winter discards,
Letting the elements sustain temperature
From cool silvery mouths.

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Fighting the Creep

He searches for wires in the shrubs,
He’d let them grow twenty feet tall
To avoid the surveillance.
Is there a microphone in pots?

A transmitter behind gate?
Or only malaria in tubs?
He’d heard about how in Texas
The government stalked an activist.

Crowed at him from perches,

Cooed at him like magpies,
Scratched out his eyes,
Blotted out his lips.

So he built his own compound

Of vine and soot,
Grafted trees from roots,
Let the bamboo take over,
It builds a log cabin with each season.

He fashions himself in topiary.

Should the root sit too deep,
It carves out in millipede shaped shreds,
Sheds a skin, brown on bronze,
Leaves an imprint in the rust,
Takes fingerprints in fossils.
He carves out the indentations.

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