Simone Regrets Purchasing a Sequin-Covered T-Shirt
“She'll don it & be lit / up like / a bug in the sun / We'll all view / at the pores & see / (in its mini-mirrors) / OURSELVES OURSELVES / OURSELVES OURSELVES”
Carousel of Knives
“the last / of my kind at the starting line, tucked sweet, / motherless, into the permafrost. Nobody knew what to ask / nor expect when I rose from the pavement degloved / and desexed.”
the bowl set down by the apricot tree
“I wasn’t aware it had grown so late: the windows black, the feral cat / invisible under the limbs. the gates to the safe world closing, I / considered my hands, their smell of danger.”
Attempt at a Theory of Begonias
“The begonias whisper among themselves / of the roses’ red scandal. / Bought. Crushed / in the backseat of a chevy / under tangled limbs, then retrieved, / sworn to secrecy.”