Unclasp the flesh from this hour, the hour
from its season, the leather tongue
 
that cinches me inside this
body, this gravity. What could I see
 
once loosened? As a scarf that flies
in the wind, or a mirror that swallows
 
the slow colors of a violet
potted on the sill. The motion and shadow
 
of what we call lives, bowed heads
of horses by firelight, and nervous little dogs
 
in the painting on the wall. What I want
is to be one of those birds
 
in the margins, longing for absolution.
Not from sin; from limits, from sameness.
 
My ideas about wings, pipette
mechanisms of filament and frost.
 
Never strong enough
to carry my weight from the frame.
 
 
 

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Lee Colin Thomas lives in Minneapolis. His work has received a Loft Mentor Series Award in poetry and an honorable mention for the Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant. Lee’s poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Salamander, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Water~Stone Review, Midwestern Gothic, Pilgrimage, The Nassau Review, and elsewhere. Online at leecolinthomas.net