(no subject)

[burnunit]

are  your arms long enough 

to undo the bindings behind me the ties 

and trappings and fringes of reminders, 

the clasps and buttons, the sewed on pieces 

can you reach these

traces of lacings and sayings

words through clenched teeth

the scent of sweets
on the dense air 

the red spring right here

alternating bursts of sun and sleet

all the dissolved ice

the misplaced slivers of light

 

yes, I said, they are

pains in the tops of my thighs departing

the breath caught in the corners of my lungs

unspooling on sharp angles of the dying winter

my head hung my apple cheeks 

my hair in all directions chest heaving

yes they will reach

 

she is a set of framed black and whites

a pair of field workers in this one

a donkey burdened with firewood

a great stack of bolts of cloth

body wrapped and all held together

each picture separated, the backgrounds the same

she is a white flash of musketfire

a stab of ecstatic pain 

at the midpoint of my shoulders

she is a streak of straw windrows

many tangles yet ordered upon the brown earth

and fresh with the dry scent of late summer

a mouth, shoulders, spine, hips

so sweetly out of season