| Twelve of Fifty How did I break the white cocoon? I’m trembling in new skin. I’m colored now, a knife. I’m liquid flame, an eye. I shake my wet kerchief of wings, my weapons, solidifying— these ripped the spiraled silk, the concrete tomb. I fold and spread the laquered fan, the petaled halves, two juicy sections of a peeled blood orange, veined by the sun. I am not food, but flight. Enemies peer down their beaks to test my poison-crimson veil. Watchful men with nets and pins stalk me. They’ll drymount their prize. But I don’t think that’s how I’ll die. One season I carve filigrees of air. I slice the syrup of earth’s breath and skirt wild currents under flat, bright sail. I will have flown as far as I can when the wind melts holes in me, the scythe of autumn tattering my fabric until it rips free, the last pierced flailing headlong against the chill and blast, my body burst, stripped of my powdery gown, a woman who, fighting to float on words, falls mute into the winter of the crowd. Back to Poems List |
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