Since her mother died my friend emits
noises unheard since the day she was born
from her mouth, she wants that woman among women
and she wants her now, her mouth once legal
elicits, her intention then sensible now is
unspeakable, the answer is no now.
I make an object of comfort, suggest, ‘Let nothing put a period
I once had a way with daughters
and watched this one with my wandering eye,
would be her raggedy friend, let her drag me
through the grass. But now she has split herself open
falling from her birthday bicycle, and she comes
a pomegranate kneecap and a sound.
As if the sun through needle's eye
Leaves a fit the shape of so and so,
So to assure release your organs lay and so
And so and so and so. As if not flung we
Would not a touched, a few months or so
Ago, we splendid splay but then some.
Sewn and scratched hue lady, hue, necessary hewn
I’ve no tune left with which to stand some.
Not a little luminous clings
This unadorned girl
I call her, ‘My patently flowering one’
When she was a girl
She began her grand project
She opened her mouth
To limn her parched sails
To memory she said,
‘Is the word a lyceum Beneath the word a river’
Once begrudged with
Vapor in her clavicles
She asked, ‘May I heave ho’