i. Of Every Tree

                    Talking to god on a burner
phone, texting heaven with chipped nails
and bared fangs, her bones manicured
by a crowd’s white-knuckled blows, from
deep inside the aching bowels
of an overrated after-
hours club, bored and alone, she quotes
Wittgenstein and Spinoza and
with god’s mind gets nowhere trying
to argue there exists a fine

                    line between them both, but language
with its limits fails to convince
Divine Providence as she sits
sub rosa, below the eyes and
ears of the world, just another
intelligent girl, another
underfunded pretty little
beneficiary of hope
this chick, how well she now knows where
to turn when hell approaches and

                    presses on, resourceful when told
that she simply should not be so
bold, so damned indomitable
in the face of odds with her firm
hands of unrelenting resolve
holding responsible fate’s stale-
dated timetable, checking its
reality’s uncontested
reliability too long
overdue, since making do is

                                        ii. A Flaming Sword

                    a move made of mistakes, since its
once unshakable foundation
keeps from quaking nature’s pattern
but nurtures without refrain what
poor decisions as terrible
as her youth’s own fail to maintain
since no mortal should be kept in
the cold, to fortune’s plan unknown
or worse, by heaven left hanging
beholden to the burning out

                    of another force, the lighting
of one spark’s flame from another’s
and so with claws of colour, this
broad she strokes the hours and taps out
what she calls her thesis, what these
scars are is a masterpiece, art
we all need to see more of when
seeking in women more than what
dead white guys, tomb-robbers styling
themselves “anatomists,” had named

                    a “matrix,” more than a place where
life is incubated, more than
wandering wombs moved too quickly
to hysterics, more than machines
making for men their requisite
heirs, her fingers furious when
pulsing to him messages this
patriarch pauses to ponder
before hitting Send, his response
‘Adam owes you more than his rib.’