Dancing In My Room Alone

I could be an eel in whirled stillwaters,
the semiotic blue of trick quicksand,
meaningless and true.

In my room, ordinary yellow objects
like lapel labels and plates
smile like similes,

caressed like air in movies,
the texture of froth. I need sugar.
Need it like a right, so sugar

is given. A river of high
minutes rising to a horizon,
only ever seeing my double eyes.

I'm so really truly enough
that I should save myself for later.
Later, don't come now.

Don't turn me back into that seventh-
grader in a human ring around the gym,
certain I'm not in the circle.

Now I'm slinging room-darkness
to sun. Swelling hips
incredibly undone,

my blind blood singing,
"qua aqua aqua,"
intoxicated

with this song's cologne,
a silk ribbon of paint
driven through nature.

Fun, who knew? Spinning
with nothing, as earth does,
I flew more than I could lose.

O god of ether, god of vapor,
I could use one of either of you.
Take me as a swan would.

Take me, wing me up and make me
dance, impaled on a hooked
prick of cyclone.

Sightless. Wind my limbs, digits
clutching feathers, around you,
and disappear.

I won't fall. I know how to do it now.
I broke the window with god's ball.
I am smoothly used

and honeyed, self-twinned, fearless,
a wineskin emptying
into a singing stranger.

Copyright © 2008 Brenda Shaughnessy All rights reserved
from Human Dark With Sugar
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission