Disarticulated women

sit flat bottomed on glass ceilings

Viewing the whole world; their first menses, their trials, their roiling souls

the cracked skin time plants, like tired seeds without life.

These women think of when they were

not so long ago, turned in hand like a

pinkened dove, and admired so …

the cheeks of suitors colored so vividly

they matched your beautiful magenta

before being struck through with fatigue

and the anaphalatic awareness of dismissal

you were hot-bellied and urging like

night creatures bound in game should

lose their shoes and climb full throated

like a ferment starling to the wildest point

and spreading indigo wings, shatter

expectation, the soft swoop of fearlessness

a kite at 2am; you didn’t need to climb

down ever, your hair raged like a voice around you

the bleeding dawn never heralding its break

into night, all were asunder and meek to your might.

Oh mighty girl, oh mighty girl!

Handfasted, redolent lioness and bringer of life

your throaty cry as passion became your tempest

how your lovers galvanized like looms of silk

to weave tapestries about your spinning form

how fast-footed you leapt, nimble and untamed

by the whip of defeat, nothing could rouse doubt.

Nay, the very heels you spurred on, opening boxes like a

drunken God, needful of no key, setting electricity

to sound, the shy moon even sought your glow

how then, can you ever believe it is over?

As you dry, desicate, lose shape, a grieving

transformation, forgetting your weft, the

divine path you struck, as tenderly as making love

against fragranced shade of a long day, when shadows

seem to fall in tangent with your own

hard boiled longing

then? How can you ever doubt

your mercury? The vastness of your make?

There is no shelf strong enough to contain

you

if you, can but, find yourself

again.

5 Replies to “Woman, climb off that shelf”

  1. You have such a way with endings. They’re always poignant and strong:

    “How can you ever doubt

    your mercury? The vastness of your make?

    There is no shelf strong enough to contain

    you

    if you, can but, find yourself

    again.”

    I truly love this poem.

  2. That girl
    The wild one
    The strong one
    The desired one
    The invincible one
    Is she gone?
    Is she lost ever more?
    Or does she live?
    Does she but sleep
    Behind skin no longer smooth?
    Can she wake, then
    Not so nimble perhaps
    But wiser
    And more patient
    And harder to deceive?

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