Sleep Cycles by Jennifer K Dick

After Sue Chenette's What Was Offered.

There is the body and the sleeping under the gift wrap. There is the sleep in body’s waking no watered silk, to knot. She turns. She whirls. She is in the waking sleep round wool, of wound. She is REM, a doll with stone for a head. She is motor purr rune stone casting over her. Who but rapt locks. Dangling. Therein her body lies. What was offered, it dreams. She is the awoken nervous commands of insomnia settling seaweed under her sleep. She is pillowed, woven into grass placemats. Down feather in her head she is casting herself farther out. She lilts, drawn circles of moisture at its mouth, the cove of it. The body begging, beginning. She follows light pushed into the bones. Her dreamcatcher is farther now. It taught her mineral memory. Of mare to night. Hard meat almost Macadamian she might caterwaul to herself waking here, of her, of howl to keep the vertebrae. She drifts back down, heavier, perishable. She dwindling cell function of storylines leading tightly upright. There where the morning glistens dawn-still cobalts. The radio seeing right through her, a skating trick. Calcium, magnesium phosphorescence against the slick grey where eye movement stops. The trick of seeking inbound on the oilstained woodplank floor. Daring. The sight of and, but, the tissue of her or she is the skeleton fragmenting. Opened.