Illustration by EC
Maybe one day I’ll hold you like
a rare African tusk,
but the next I’ll glow over
to the canvas and make green love to it.
You mean nothing to me
without a definition. The day
after that, I’ll leave the farmer’s
market with blood in my mouth
and dead hydrangeas in my hair—
I won’t be thinking about you
lonely at my desk holding your
face in your hands with
no pearl oval gold-ringed
fingernails for that feminine comfort.
I won’t think about you—
you with no OED entry, sitting
like a copper pot saying the word
meld meld meld over and over
in your glassy blue way.
I’ll carry green jugs home
from Grandma’s, from the basement,
from Nigeria—
You’ve traveled so far to reach me!—
I’m in the sky with yellow airplanes.
Yellow canvas airplanes. Screaming
yes yes yes through the no-glass,
my hat not holding me down.
One reply on “Poem: Insect Artist; Or, Don’t Hold Me Down!”
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