An Introduction to the Archetypes

Somewhere, a woman wears an eye
in her navel, locking the frog prince
inside a tiger’s maw; she asks only

for a ménage a cinq, for a means to
temper a bad hexagram in a ring
of rock salt. You dangle by

an ankle, ravenbitten, with runes
for fingernails, while harpies
pick at fleshless trees. They

caw in anagrams. Last year,
there was a drought in the
suburbs, concrete boxes of

nouns, verbless streets dark
with snowmelt. She mixes
a balm for your guilty

tongue, of human fat and
rosemary, with a touch of
spider’s blood. Vibration

is the only way to square
the circle, to conjugate
eggs and air. A tincture,

a tonic for skinless bones.