we see your brown foot with bells
the heavy garter of melancholy
piquant behind your ears and underneath
the backwards black dress that catches us,
zig-zag ivy, buttons along spine rock
like the tasseled nipples of a pin-up.


it unnerves us, how our mothers speak
cautionary tales from front gates.
we meet long enough to hush your
bare legs back into child’s play,
chanting morning-after down to the house
where our mothers wait with a white sheet.