His brass-plated nickel twists—
a tangled rope looping on itself
looping around a thumbtack
looping around your throat.
Teardrop gems in brass saucers
fall in jangling rivulets, streams
of crystalline blues. Wrung
from shades of sky, cloudless
summer and midnight indigo,
they shape-shift in shadows
drip—
drip—
dripping from the s-curve
of a bronze body crusted
in blues, blacks, and greens.
A flower is carved under
each jewel, a map of a bird’s nest—
a map to a bird’s nest,
like he might forget in the small,
dark hours of the morning where he belongs.
Home is not dangling from a bookshelf.
Through lamplight and sunlight
his stares due west.
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 12:05 AM UTC
His brass-plated nickel twists—
a tangled rope looping on itself
looping around a thumbtack
looping around your throat.
Teardrop gems in brass saucers
fall in jangling rivulets, streams
of crystalline blues. Wrung
from shades of sky, cloudless
summer and midnight indigo,
they shape-shift in shadows
drip—
drip—
dripping from the s-curve
of a bronze body crusted
in blues, blacks, and greens.
A flower is carved under
each jewel, a map of a bird’s nest—
a map to a bird’s nest,
like he might forget in the small,
dark hours of the morning where he belongs.
Home is not dangling from a bookshelf.
Through lamplight and sunlight
his stares due west.
