The first thing is how to rescue. How to be less
damaged but damaged enough to seem fair.
A favored method is never use your hands for anything.
To inspect your tongue every day and get ready
for a surprise: there are always intruders.
There is always a place where the number of knots
you untie equals the number of people fighting
to comb your hair. What I suggest is a whole different animal:
Assembling rugs until they form a heap.
Waiting for snow just to have something constant on supply.
I can store all the rakes I want in the mud room but only
at the dinner table can I demonstrate the truest salvage.
What it is to eat as if by megaphone I will show you.
If I commit to claiming brain cloud what am I accountable for?
I am told it’s all in the way you ride that penny pony
but I’ve never known the right time to buck.
There is always so much to misunderstand.
Like how everything with lineage can’t ever sit still.
The exact circumstances for swapping a ladder.
God I am so full of odds. What if I crawl inside
the base of this house? What if I built its outside last?

Anne Cecelia Holmes is the managing editor of jubilat. Recent poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, H_NGM_N, and La Petite Zine. Her chapbook, Junk Parade, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. With Lily Ladewig, she is co-author of the chapbook I Am A Natural Wonder (Blue Hour Press, 2011). She lives in Northampton, MA.