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and mud effigy
    as when she first looked at a corpse
    someone she had loved
    wanting, watching as his body flamed
    to smear ashes over her own body
    ashes that were once steady arms
    held her fast
    sturdy legs of a body
    twisted around her
    a flame coiled at the center, below
    as he enters her
    dare speak of a face?
    they were exceedingly young
    she said, becoming one together
    like a cargo cult of magical thinking
    dark curls
    saliva
    l feel like a suttee widow
    long hours at the Ganges
    looking out on the water
    devotees come to bathe
    collect the drops of polluted water now
    still sacred in the imagination
    lineage of sacral tears
    thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air
…

    watch the flames on the ghats
    dart like insects to the sky
    a night sky this time
    smoke coils like dragons,
    sea serpents, or seeing the skeleton of a phantasmagorical airship
    ascend through clouds
    she put the ashes of her mentor in the duplicated river Tirta Gangga
    spectacle of death
    a phantom skull at the breast
    gleam, did she kill her shadow?
    polished bone—color of raven’s wings—turned
    to blackest coral—at the breast
    might still gleam
    or the hollow sockets once his grand old poet eyes
    wasted in spectral identity?
    co-opted in a ghoulish meditation
    how an impostor might coalesce
    and enter when your mind is weak
    turn away from it
    but you know
    how demons enter
    backward
    facilitating the extinction
    of the Zoe Waterfall Damsel
    she might set it down, all extinctions
    would they be of any use in her prism
    bringing events to order?
backward
    she saw masses of fabrication in the stories others tell
    saw through claims and exaggerations
    saw through protests of love, fealty
    way a daughter might, skeptic
    of “history” might
    especially “his” or rather a “his” might
    or big sister or mother or “hers”
    being ahistorical
    see spectacle as separation, spectacle as end of our linguistic aid
    a “mistress narrative,” you might say, perhaps preferable
    subtle           persuasive
    insistently oral
    most melodious tone
    studied other languages on foreign language tapes
    spent time in the prison library
    an auspicious time
    up against uncertain worlds
    shrinking
    where human is finite, an invention of recent date
    time that we say our fantasies are controlled by propaganda
    born too into the middle of a century before
    we are “gone”
    or when the mores changed and
    favored women who were set up against each other in jealous rage
    that too passes…will pass
    may allegory speak of unconditional love?
    I want to amuse you, my doubles, hasty beloveds
    come wash all your thoughts upon me, a seed-vault sanctuary on a remote sea
    a living casket Porsephina keeps of Archive
    old romances, antic lore, and scrutiny take over,
    considered the centuries she had been born to cross
    in crossing of millennium
    twin broken vertebrae
    interminable time, it seemed
    growing
    to archonhood…
    what she was willing to part with
    let go of
    who lets go of
    shed more skins
    why she would go out as one one day
    go out as another one the next
    looking into the darkness of her own time
    with congruent vision
    artifact: a silenced vibration in your pocket
    cause for alarm?
    the other Anne took to the stage
    she did imitations of the Original Anne
    she billed herself Anne
    she went public all over the world
    with all the attributes and the albatross of Original Anne
    she had some high notes
    she could sing in a queer falsetto
    and occasionally some deep tones like Tibetan monks which Original Anne had so perfected
    deep tones that reverberated with the earthy guttural sounds of Original Anne
    she claimed to have read and know all the books read and studied by the Original Anne
    because they were of the same historical time frame she would attach signifying herself to the signs and sighs of the Original Anne
    eidolons of Original Anne
    she mounted her telescope to the coordinating points and frequencies of Original Anne
    the other