The White Queen Comes the White Queen worryingand hurrying to keep up and losingher hairpins. Mind pieces slipout of their sockets. Because it is all held togetherwith hairpins —the old kind, meant to be invisible? And they were invisible.I didn’t know they were there holding my mind togetheruntil I startedto lose it. Someone whose name…
Myopia in the Afternoon What landscape is this? My flesh curvingover your bones, pectoral swellunder my cheek, darkness of tangled fur,and beyond that, the wet angled branch of a tree, and beyond that,something white, something pale blue.Call it tree and window,sky and snow. But what this is, so close at hand, I cannot say.This landscape…
Fat Time Under purest ultramarine the raisedgoblets of trees overrun with gold.We should be reeling drunk and portly as groundhogsthrough these windfalls of russet, citron, bronze, chartreuse. Everywhere color pools like butter, like oil of ripe nuts,like piles of oranges under a striped tent. Oh, let us be greedy of eyeball,pigs scuffling in this gorgeous…
Wise to Cinderellafor Mary Brown At five, we liked the same stories,laughed at dissonance, were wise to Cinderella. We dressed in women’s clothes, tried them onfor size. No tulle or glass slippers,though we’d have gone for a spangle or twohad anything shiny been in the box. You were Puss-In-Boots: skirts hiked up,ready to swash buckles,…
Second Childhoodfor Lucille Clifton Bless Lucille’s big hips!And bless my own free-at-last hips!Here they are dawdlingand not worrying onebit about where they arein relationto anyone else. You can look at me or not.I am not saying anything personal anymore. I am saying hips breasts belly legs feetroots branches and big thick trunktidessunrisesmonkeys lithe and witty…
Woman With Crows There is a woman who catches crows on her tongue.They speak when she is tongue-tied. In the mornings she advises balloons.How high it is safe to go, and when to retire from politics. At night she turns into creek water and sleepsin a quart berry basket. A crow could carry her. When…