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Show Still Life of a Woman I made my bed, now sleep in it. Helen Keller used scent like a yarn to measure distance. When I smoke cigarettes, space elongates. I live within mesh. A cat squawks. At eight, loneliness is a Western: horses stampeding across the Old Frontier, kicking up a lot of dust. The family is wandering: Father busying himself with the mechanics of the wagon, Mother, theme song: "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" (only it's 1966). No; Mother is both the tinkling of a chandelier and the light refracting. For someone who has lived mostly celibate, there is music-tones like pressure on almost-ice water packaged in see-through plastic- ripples like sunlight and shadows of branches and leaves. For someone who has lived mostly celibate, there is music- Is sex a sense? If so, do the other senses get keener to compensate? One could say they dull. ...But if one is always wanting? My bark turns gray. August, the harvest moon sags. This the only August I will be forty. There is no child. A part of me is dying, I would like to say. |