She
She hatched with a rainwet smile
She had lips a crimson bruise
She smoldered, she dared.
She rolled open her palm like scrolls
She reached for inkwoven brows
She sucked them playfully to say:
She was golden locket, she was the solid ring
She never wavered in her gaze
She started at the first blow
She nursed her exploded jaw
She did not shield against the rest
She deserved them all
She let them ugly up her face
She uglied it herself
She healed and pouted lips again
She pouted and she bled
She drained the blush from slope of cheek
She emptied poems from her wrists
She metronomed her vicious hips
She lowered eyes to crescent coal
She softened with the spring though
She damned herself to that, she did
She always opened pink and raw
She erased even and insouciant
She, who haunted Eden’s obelisks and mausolea
She echoed dirges, she filled urns
She loved and loved again
She loved and loved and loved
She coiled around
She oiled scalps
She roiled rhymes hummed into ribs
She boiled water for his tea
She smeared the honey
She held the pot
She let him dip his finger in
She saw him hammerfist it
She pounded at her throat
She shrieked to please explain
She bloodied stars, she tore the harps
She wound its strings around her face
She began the weaving then
She studied many masks
She looked like ghosts of girls she’d been
She said let them kill a girl so dead
She fit it to her pretty face
She chafed beneath its weight
She bit the blisters, sipped the salt
She forgot the rainwet lips, they forgot how to taste
She is stone
She is chalk
She grays
She, smoke tumbling from his lips
She was seen again at the graves last night
She couldn’t cry at all
She scattered shriveled roses
She crunched over their thorns
She hummed some silly song
She gloomed about the stones
She peeks alive from time to time
She wants someone to see, she does
She sang something that goes like this,
she moaned over the gusts:
“She trusts, she does. She must. Or the golden locket rusts.
She sheds the armor, wipes her lips of dust.
She sips the sweet of dusk. She loves.”