Who is this turned away
from me in a gown
and red panties with
Wonder Woman on them
because as much as I like the
inane sexual war,
there persists
or more so, does not
consistency with the rain,
mind insane with engravings of
an uncontrollable pain.
Poetry is writing’s mascara,
and I hesitate confirming
my own vanity
by telling you to wear less make-up
and make the boys stare
because neither my attention
nor your own success is enough
to have you stay away
since you did it.
We all know you did.
Some think you did more,
and I’m somewhere between here and
not here,
the only opposite of presence.
I want your weakness,
guilty as it makes me,
dangerous as it is,
strange as it is to think
that two glasses could kill
and look into the other
while biding their contemplation,
full dissociation.
I’m looking at one person,
kissing another
red but
white goose
that bites with its
tongue,
and the shades are drawn
with a Katab-brand fountain pen
dedicated to avoiding pocket stains.
Who is this
ageless child
stranger to me
than I noticed,
disconnected by
reddish-orange strands
and a smile often
higher on the left side
from where the child died
and became a woman
or something like it
that I like better,
something dark,
the fallen angel of light
having taught a woman
to not fall
even if what’s
remembered ages since
with a sigh
from one of her benefactors.
Who is this
that sees the world
more clearly than I,
crosses off the mob
without becoming crass
and is true
when no one knows it?
How big is a mistake
in Newtons,
how long does it take
for two trains heading northeast and northwest
to forget about each other?
And how often does this cross her mind?
