ELSIE'S COMPLAINT
          
I wake every day and I'm made of wood.
I wake every day to lines that criss-cross
my back, down my legs and across my arms.
I wake to the whirring fan and space heat-
er, the roaring thing, the slash of hunger.
If in more than words I gave you the idea

then you would spit it out. So, the idea.
Let's see. If I'm burning I must be wood.
But the tree does not bite to sate hunger.
The tree does not move. I'm humming across
the ocean continuously. The heat
boils water before my paddling arms

and I could drink dry the whole Green Man's Arms
if it wasn't all steaming. Bad idea.
When all you have is running on the heat,
water-cooling is death. Xylem in wood,
the little tubes stretching up and across
the branch. The tree does not bite, but hunger

makes me strip the bark with my teeth. Hunger
makes me tear the blue flesh off from my arms. 
Hunger makes me tear him down from the cross
into little flat biscuits. The idea
offends some. I don't care. I grind the wood
into powder trying to cure the heat.

I snort the powder but it makes the heat
worse. One more coffee might quash the hunger.
How it hurts; reanimating the wood
like Pinocchio, jiggling-string-arms,
just to hold still for people with no idea.
I picture loading and firing a cross-

bow into his head at the meeting, 'cross
the room with blood splatter. It was the heat
of the moment, sir. I've no idea
how she got it in here. Instead, hunger
for revenge turns sour. The secret arm-
ory cracking, metal revealed boxwood.

So, get the idea? This thing burns the cross
like old firewood. Engine overheat-
ing, dry with hunger, breaking my own arms.