Didn't you
always wanna
be the iron?
(or the thimble?)
And your cousin
had to be
the little car?
(the dog?)
the cannon?)
(the battleship?)
What else was there?
A whole rainy day
to get naked
and rich.
What's the Virgin Mary
Doing in a clamshell
With a frog
And the American Flag?
60 dollars for my daughter's hair,
played for keeps or lost
under sighed bamboo:
still living under three roofs,
plum blossoms paper cut
into memory, without.
Fourteen last summer,
never alone;
great wall, tall, drawing,
a thousand times gone.
Awaiting fifteen,
sour-sweet, desired: mingled
hennaed palms and tender belly,
hidden mandala, forgotten eye.
You fierce my secrets,
remembered river, banks and bending,
now and gone,
noise and voices, moonlet, still.
Ah, my feet had beauty,
gait firm and certain, never changing,
rocks to gravel, shallow, deep;
leaves locked above me,
forced woman early,
pasture grass yellowed:
no changes, no outward hurtings, no piercing,
image through image, body steep.
Let me tell you, things forgotten,
changes chosen, choice you keep,
crawling far as changes sleep.
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