Gilded
Red thread pulled out of muslin lays bare
Take down the curtains, satin brocade, hips thighs
Babylon as setting sun, luxury unto beaded braEmbellishment purple lays on evening’s sky
Watered silk, tabby cat lounging in matron’s lapCall it ramshackle territory, edges, comb
Lost her hair to scarlet fever but kept it in a boxNuminous signal in the gated mystery
Maximum courage, major babel, all fall downTurmeric on the toast, evening cliché of autumn
Pay the penalty for peddling inferior goodsWhere terrace engendered the embroidered earth
Large-breasted, flat-nosed, majarajah from the trainShe told her friend about harmonies in synesthesia
A head a skull in the proper grammarWe cannot leave out mud, we’d like to, the dull
Proud dirt suffered, enduredWhat is the most amorous color? Not red, blended blue
Spontaneous can’t be magnified nor ignoredRise, sink, spread, the hands, knees, wedding
Ghosts
Irrigation was a fact of her youth as were plums
Vulnerable skin or is it mind? Door in the forehead
Blandishments about hair-do’s so as to join The Women’s ClubFamily fabric, Grandpa’s low brow
Climbing trees, eucalyptus, oak, glimpses of Mother’s faceBut walls on that stone house were regulation thick
Nothing was said to her, it was small town fearWhere the disc had scooped earth away from roots
During the war and then Korea, her alcoholic cousin mustered outShe didn’t know the meaning of the word: pavane
Grandfather’s Studebaker, upholstery prickly on bare legsShe had no expectations to dwindle or grow thin
There were many reasons not to wear skirts. NeverthelessShe loved learning that chisel means cheat
Her dad, his ubiquitous shovel, the mud, the pipesBroken flint, arrowheads the plow turned up
Does no good to think about it now, it was the tableauLooking for the term that means: to draw the curtain
Adolescence descended like sticks, stones and blurA cogent sister, an opaque parent
Wrap the criminal body in Grandma’s brocade, hide it in the trunkThe rest of life to untangle
Moving present
A place quivering in the brilliant eye without containment
Why hold back a more chocolatey effervescence?
Unaware of how snobs like to hob-nob aboutThe mind uncovers details, the robin’s jeering laugh
Mother-of-pearl confesses itself to be second-rateBlossoms, loving profusion, plum petals’ noon
Coulottes can be charming, starched little by littleIn orchard straight rows wind drives new twigs crazy
Dazzle of tricycle and afternoon dapple on lake’s laughWait! don’t wait! possessive pronoun tossed aside
No skirts allowed, due to spills, due to pantiesSacrificial awe threaded through scents of spring
Ignorant of Timbuktu and school standards but: bicycle soonCould be kept, memorially, as the mind plays with toys
Whirr of loop-de-loops the salient American paragraphUncanny sun whose course seems much like kneeling
Stop, dead
On the skin of the finger, a tiny break swelling
Marching through the draw, cows create a trail
Remember the tree against the bare hill, old oakLens, fluent scanner of landscape perfections
Camaraderie of twig, leaf ‘n light on bark prismaticIn its own way, something that’s completely useless
Deduce the link oak branches have with synapses in her brainRepose, involuntarily architectural, her fatigue
Vocabulary adds a new language, maybe HungarianNight diminishes what long grass can speak
No human says the same word for rainbowNo hotel can provide the music of the solstice
In the same mental room as sky-water, rainbow troutQuarrel accumulates cargo, ascends energy
Boisterous bootlegger, keeping the back door open