ANNA JOURNEY
The Mirror’s Lake Is Forever
That’s when I knew the mirror was all sex and hard
fact. Unlike knowing my grandfather
posthumously. Because a ghost can’t be
androgynous as a lamp is,
as peat moss is,
as the smell of cedar—
knife-feathery. Because the dead
can watch me pee without
even a trace of embarrassment. And who
has the right to more? Mirror
that couldn’t reach my dead
grandfather’s closet—his jewel-colored
medical books in former editions,
his gay porn magazines: men smooth
as conchs in softcore seascapes. My mother,
who found them while cleaning
out his house, asks, Are you sorry
I told you? I said, No,
I’m not sorry. As if staring
into his horn-rims and my grandmother’s
coral dress could help me understand
the selfishness of portraits—
their shut door splintering the past’s
exact coffin-space.
I know that shame
is beard-high with two daughters—the blonde
one with cats and the dark one with red-
haired girls. I know
the mirror’s lake is forever
dragged for corpses, lily-buoyant
arteries, livers, and cocks. I know
he’s caught there: doctor,
with his white coat, and gold-veined
tobacco. And what is more haunted
than the smoked voices
of cicadas under plums? And what
heats faster than silver? His constellation:
cold instruments raised
over useless space. Somewhere
there’s a ghost
I’ll open my shirt for, recount my
Entire Medical History for,
who I’ll forgive for wearing
tweed and love beads and for hiding
stacks of magazines in the dark, who will press
that silver scope to his ear, who will listen. 
Contributor’s
notes
Clockwork Erotica: Why He Takes Off His Glasses
When Telekinesis Fails 
Elegy: I Pass by the Erotic Bakery
He Has Given His Face to the Waters of the Lake
Letter to the City Bayou by Its Sign: Beware Alligators
Night with Eros in the Story of Leather (2)
Introductions: A Reading Loop
Tracking the Muse | Everyone Needs A Little Thanatos