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.
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.
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?
very nice! <3 great piece of work!
This, with its trademark imagery, flows particularly well
WOW.