SWING-SET

Soon, out of the womb ‘down there' is nuance.

It guides you, like a legality, like your own breathing,

in and out of overtone, hardcore hodgepodges,

those inklings near sacrosanct beyond breakfront

negligees and neo-negligence leading the good life.

Isn't it romantic? Wasn't it morbid? Watching

the cleaning girl rush to catch his car,

her fine-boned feet skipping down the stairs, after him,

after he'd left your bed, still damp,

her trotting alongside his black Bavarian car,

you watching her tapping on his blue-tinted window,

him lowering it just a slit, just the barest invitation for her

willing fingers to enter, and like little arrows make contact

with a man who has no clue how much you'd watched his starving

girl, that pulling back of her hand from the pinch of a future

choking, that sucking on her insensible fingers, not knowing

how easily you could have taught her to tip them with poison.



From IN A PASTURE WITH PALOMINOS
Tebot Bach Publications 2010