is like cotton twine,
if you put a match

to string, it will
burn away,

but if dipped
in beeswax

the flame will be
slow and sure.

How could she
Have been more
In all her sordidness
Was it the way her
Body bucked and
Lifted?

we were out on the porch
on an abnormally warm december night
with little glow florence off to the west
and he hadn't said much of what was there
because when he says nothing he is, with
his words laid out beneath pearl snaps
scrawled down his stomach--I would know,
i've seen his the tyrades plow, resentment
run thick, angry words rampant in his veins--

so he says nothing, and I know.

often times he is an open door and
i am the wind, in billows or gasps, rattling
hinges, finding holes, peeling paint or gathering dust
a spool of thread wrapped around stonehenge to remember
curls of foilage, svelte figureheads on galleons, I tell him

that I want to be with him and he says nothing. won't even look at me,
he's somewhere far away, drawn into penrose like a soul sunk in the
dirt, I say it again, and he tells me we should go inside


so i want to ask if that is all i am,
if that is what this is, if i am only good
for one night or two hours, in bits and pieces
limbs and moisture, if as a whole i am too much
but still lacking, if the warmth of my hips is
all that's needed but the grand luminance of a soul is out of the question?


But I say none of that, just follow him inside.
A hundred questions trickling down my spine, gathering in my femur, my calves, gusting into my lungs, I don't know how to be more than this and less, I'm opening up the cavity of my chest and pleading this

this is all there is.
I am all that I can be

He stands like William Stanley Moore
a mugshot of an old gangster I saw once
in sepia, stony, strangely clarified, endowed
immortalized in caramel marble
glassy eyes and all--

he plowed ahead that night
fingers twitching, only to turn
around outside of the light
once we'd gone through
the doors and I'd fled down
the stairs in his wake
to clip his heels

I've been chasing his shadow
tying my lead to his bow
far away from my own
dock, a sailboat piping
behind a cottonclad warship

I am small and timid
soft and malleable, unwild
unwoven, strips of silk in the foyer
running through his fingers
sheets sliding down his back
I cannot give what other girls
have given, the way they
dive and plead and swarm
I can only coat, can only
rinse, only lather, I can only
run over--

I am standing at his bookshelf
running a finger over the spines
gingerly closing the cabinet or
slipping into his bed, tucked
away like a porcelain doll
I try
i try
i try

but there's been so many
different ways to love since
then, and they've never been
as gentle as I dreamed

and ever since then, near everything
has been a threat, a reminder that
As myself is not enough, this girl
These hands, these surly smiles
The way I dance, my naked wiles
I've willed myself to adjust
To fit what locks I can unlock

I melted down and poured me out
Filled the holes around the house,
Into votives in the halls, Mount me
Up along the walls, lined the porch
Out in the night beside your boots
I've flickered bright---

But that is not enough.


That is not enough.