VINYL POETRY

Volume 6, July 2012

BIRDIE
Rebecca HazeltonView Contributor’s Note

Self Portrait as Thing in the Forest

Behind this dress,
two women
in the mess of one body hardly covered
by the stiff beauty of lustrous rustle.

Behind these freckled breasts,
two hearts that rush the blood,
divergent desires—

twin to the unseemly split between predator
and prey,
the white pet-store rat
bred for the boa
and the boa that would remake
the Florida landscape in his ever expanding image—

if the one woman is the call
to the other’s answer
the answer is to keep calling and calling
into the swamp and humid.
If the container can’t lull
its contents into some sense of contentment,
the glass breaks, and out rush the teeth.

In a fixed loop, tie this sash of silk shot, plain weave,
and with a half hitch secure
against a hunger
that grows without natural enemy.
A desire uncurbed
is a flagrant thing, is a woman
in the mirror, seeing clearly.