~*~
sweet eileen
You must see the lure
for what it really is, watch for it:
the hook, the catch, the reel.
A woman in a silver cage,
a man stroking her hair and cooingwhile the blackness moves in,
then retreats. You see, I was
quartered, my mouth stained
from kissing. Unhinged
by lavender soap and peaches
he’d wrap in the most exquisite
silk stockings. Even my sighstenuous, like box string, the unbroken
line if fields rising toward us each night.
My voice a disturbance in the dark
architecture of tents.My box, my god, my tilt-a –whirl high.
Sugar flowing from all my cavities.
How I lost it, lied about it, never had it.
Wrangled it free from the lions
with my bare hands
~*~
the seven esmereldas
Every night, he lights them,
sputtering, wicking against
the canvas, linked like charm
bracelets, black holes.
Like a fairytale, only with swinging.
Each girl barefoot, blindfolded.
In the aftermath, shivering in the footlights.It's a matter of scale,
the further away she is, the more
she looks like the others,
the more she looks like the moon
waist deep and pastel. Slipping
through another's hands like rope.Every night, he lives one twirling
above the crowd, waiting for
the finale. Every night, an applause
and a girl left tangled in the wires.
~*~
the bird girl of Jackson county
After we hid the scissors, every sharp
sound from the cabinet made Livvie
shake, made Cora cry in the cellar.
Everything rusty and hollowed like spoons.
Couldn’t tell our bodies from blades, some days,
all that carnage and hair. Damage coiled in
our stomachs something fierce, mother lighting
candles to coaxing out the devil with fish oil
and spankings. Trick us into closets and backseats.
Blood on the linoleum and in the black-eyed Susans.
My mouth like an emptied box when she slapped me,
when I birthed something fierce beneath the bed.
Hitched it to the frame, called it worry.~*~