Kestrel: Two Poems

First published in issue 49, Summer 2023 of Kestrel.

The Beholden

I am a glutton for beauty

and I can find it in most 

of what I see, eye lit like a crow 

for sparkle. Every human body, 

beautiful in its waddle, every flower 

I’ve ever met, certainly every cake 

and pizza pie. The timbre of trainsong 

bakes a bread rising in my throat, 

the bravado of a finch, there on the 

ground in shocking risk, the toll 

of a rhyme rolled in my mouth like wine 

from a bell-shaped glass, music: I feel it 

in the pulse of windows lit at night, 

or the texture of water worn like a gown.

Those are easy, but what about 

the crack lacquer of asphalt, graffiti 

tagged streetside, the smell of 

diesel and aged piss when taken 

together has a certain joie de vivre, 

a holiness. What about the wrinkles 

on my face, the summer death 

of grass, or the bark of a slammed door? 

I can see it in the mouse dunn color 

of that one kind of lichen, almost invisible 

against the boulder, yet yielding 

an electric violet dye. 

Roll me in trash and glass petals, fill me 

with fondant profanities shouted 

in the street. Give me the blue cheese 

and all the kinds of bodies. Belch me 

into laughter, wrap me up in newspaper

like a day-old baked good. Take me 

to the river and wash me not in soap, 

but cover me in all the matter:

the ash and brown, tell me 

that the war is over, 

the one we wage against the ugly.

Costume Box

Trouser me in cold 

comfort this morning, 

my head is swathed 

in a scarf confused

for upright moral behavior.

My apples hang heavy 

in the brassiere of nuclear 

fusion. All my pouring 

is belted in, mom pants on, 

the rise is high and tight.

I blouse over itchings 

to wander this endangered land

through each sock to scratch it, 

to crawl knee-padded on every

terrain, clad in a thick 

taffeta of green naivete.

I could don mosquito nets, 

camouflaged in calluses of red 

dirt and slipping in khaki,

or zipped up in a leather city

rubbered with glitter and stiletto

conversation, pointed and brazen.

Sandle my summers in live coral and

let me be polished by humidity, 

salted bikinis clinking in the breeze.

Watch me try on a brick house loafered 

with a garden full of black velvet 

flowers and purple peppers too.

Crochet away from these buttons (not

to be pressed), cut the laces and

fitted turtlenecks that crowd 

my collarspace. 

What would I put on 

if the closet was only mine?

What silks or cashmeres would 

I rub up against, twirling suede

around my little finger?