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The Driftwood Review
                                              
                                                                 Kim Lock         
        Veins Wiggle Worm-like
       
       
        In the notebook she disarms you with her tongue: such sweet
        sounds, and wet. In the notebook her history explodes,
        the truth of it in graphite serifs. In the notebook a beaten-up
        battery silvery and useless: kept for a collage of spent
        images. In the notebook why not swim the length of the Wye,
        she’s always wanted to stand at its source, drink mystery:
        intelligence as in walnuts and rocks. In the notebook
        under dock leaves, hiding from seekers, earth moist and cool,
        blackberries a few days from ripeness. In the notebook direct
        objects fill vases, create sickness: tantamount to being left-
        handed, therefore sinister. In the notebook how glands rule
        urges and fears: let them be quiet while she’s on tenterhooks,
        while she dreams of being squeezed by a presence, fingers fat,
        confined. In the notebook torchlight scrapes the wall where
        air scuds: she’s seen it and wondered, heady: she’s held tight
        by agreement, by Anglo Saxon, by financial constraints and by
        stir-fries. In the notebook strange visions of a horse’s dirigible
        lips wolfing up a bruised apple while pigeon shit piles up next to
        straw bales: she tells him in a teeming moment of honesty that
        she did not cry when her mother miscarried, asked only if the
        baby was boy or girl. In the notebook she does what’s called
        speech, gross whistles, and makes veins wiggle worm-like: upon
        finding a hair that is her original color, she cries for her age,
        wonders what pregnancy would have been like: only in the
        notebook does she admit fear and panic at the closeness of the
        page: she yearns for a Himmelsbrief, a sign, anything that affirms
        her journey. In the note book she eats well and makes boot.
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