Anahata

Inside this cold is real and white.
On the drainboard the iceberg lettuce froze
filling the world with absent landlords
droning cross-wired conversations:
the rent is due the rent is due:
it’s always a bad connection.

They say that hearing is the last to go.

Here inside, the faint-hearted hunter
stalks her rodent soul; for practice
she picked off goldfish through ice-cream
scum on dishwater; ragdolls she routed
from hiding among the household bills.
In the traps she set for dragons,
snakes, or fathers–bigger game–
a rabbit lies rehearsing death.
Steel teeth hold it by the leg,
suck its flesh, as fiercely locked
as an unborn flower, petals
grit against the winter. Unmoving
the rabbit feeds its pain the blank
flow of milky quiet, unmoved.
The snare resists with the ingrown
grip of a curled childhood, groans
and gives, submitting to bloom, forced
by the hunter’s coward hand.
Freed, the rabbit leaps.

They say that suffering is the first grace.

From deep within my burrow,
above the din of bleached noises,
I hear my crippled spring snapping
angels from glaciers.
Blood sears snow and feelings hiss:

Anahata:
the lotus opens.

-Kitty Yanson