The tracings around my edges? Your black silk stockings. My ripped sweater. The hard knots of your outrage. I hear peanuts spilling down an air shaft. I touch the line of your thin brown lips. The line of your eye, the other eye. An eggy substance slushes through our nappy lashing. This is all vanity in the mirror. I trace a line through the memory of us. We get enraptured in our own natures. We've got a lot of nerve. Everybody else is taking another approach. We play with each other's toes on pink-green sheets. Here we are in summer sunlight with the nerve to touch our own mystery. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE TREE OF SONG by SARA TEASDALE EPITHALAMION MADE AT LINCOLNES INNE by JOHN DONNE ON A FLOWER FROM THE FIELD OF GRUTLI by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS A HOUSE IN FESTUBERT by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN PHANTOMS IN GREEN by STANLEY KILNER BOOTH DOVECOTT MILL: 13. THE FATHER by PHOEBE CARY LINES FROM A NOTEBOOK - FEBRUARY 1807 (2) by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE |