Thinks Herself Precious at a Price

Rounding the Cape Horn, you looked
back at me seeing I

was the sun. The traffic between us
was all-important. In the lapse

between noontide and nightlong,
souchong (some stuff is just too precious).

To arpeggios of mice on clavier keys,
you said good for God, tipping the "O" with your tongue,

like a forceps. Nothing doing has done him, your ex-
husband, no wrong. And all this to-do,

green as the sky between thighs,
reflective night sea, lit and spinning like sequins

over ice toward the blades
of the silver-tipped sharks. And you, with a shiver,

count yourself well-dressed,
wearing nothing much to speak of.

Long as this side-rush in your mind
is addressed to cheap jewelry-men's eyes,

even for no yesterdays and nothing
to come, let my words, which come translated

as yours (because I don't talk
like this), just keep up the telling.

Copyright © 2005 Stephen Massimilla All rights reserved
from Quarterly West
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission