WHEN YOUR HEART IS ABOUT TO STOP PRINT

White wine in the shower thins the blood.
Index finger hard against the temple vein.

Do not sleep it off. Before a thunderstorm,
when colors are severe, tilt your umbrella

and let the first drops hit your hair. So as not
to appear small, put on all your winter coats.

If you’ve waded, navel deep, into some warm ocean,
whatever lights the world doesn’t matter—

your hands are over your eyes and everything
will pass through you with expected force.

Night piano in an empty room with flagstone walls.
Run your dishwasher and washing machine

empty but add detergent. The waste leads to
domestic rhythm and phosphates

will spray warm and hard into the hollows
of your future body. Mass, but for the censer

and the smoke. True there is circular motion,
music, burned-out incandescent bulbs

and the pole nevertheless continues
through the horse’s body, but you should sit

in the one sleigh and eventually stop
feeling the circle but the point where it begins.

Caren Scott lives in Seattle, archives films, and shoots video for post-rock band Fields Without Fences. She has lived an eerily similar life, in a similar inlet, on each coast. She has won prizes or tiny checks from Agnes Scott College, Clark Atlanta University, and the Greater Augusta Arts Council. Her work has appeared in NOÖ Weekly, Phoebe, The Cypress Dome, and The Rectangle.