Perturbation my Sister

after Max Ernst

She made one wall of pitchers, another of pitchforks, hung an exit sign between them. "I'm leaving," she said. After breakfast, she wandered this hallway, pricking her fingers on the pitchforks, dripping blood into the pitchers. Her terrier hopped over the wall made of pitchers, howled when she stopped to rest her wrists in a pitchfork's hollows. Rain filled the pitchers, and the wall leaked. Swans swam behind her, and she shielded their heads with her skirt. Her rings sleeved the pitchforks' prongs, and her arms fell like loose bales at her sides. As she waded the hallway, her vessels winked, dorsal fins reminding her of the mouths beneath her, that she could ease herself into them.