first, thread your eyes with lace & shells, paint
your nipples with drying mud, watch the cells flake
off your gold-wracked body
*
it’s true you used to look at skin
darker than yours & see your posture straighten
it’s true you’re ashamed of your bird cage, your glass
year, your short shorts & tan lines
*
what if you were a gold bangle placed on a darker woman’s
nape? ring around the cord around the
touch me my skin is a glisten you’ll call :
*
what if you were the black paint smeared
across your own dark cheeks?
*
so you say to the birch skeleton in the bathroom mirror
unravel me i’m all this stuff of the earth. the mirror could be
laughing, could be saying girl, in my light
you’re just another pale : another unmarried :
*
you say touch me i’m the bronzer
like there isn’t all this death in here
*
welcome to the country of white sheets
& black bird cages, of everything-tasseled-is : of everything-
holy, the already-dead, your absence