Poetess

Sylvia nicked her finger,
Dead white, red plush-
Now there’s a poem!
She had a taste for chemistry too
But letters don’t worm like words.
Words- not a girl’s work but still
She went lashing on that locked door
With half-lines clasped between her fingers like writhing lice,
Screaming and scrawling on the
Carpeted floors
Where marriage and new-borns
kept her tightly coiled.

Love unwound her, for a bit,
But there were others-
Prettier, and without consequences
Stuck in their smiles.

Long full skirts
Swathed around hard jiving legs,
Her lips, a deep biting crimson red.

And I can’t help but wonder if she could have been saved
By a new decade
Where she could manage on Xanax
And write an angry column for the
New York Times.
Sadness, like a dark crime, had
Stoney-coated men send sparks
Amping through her head, But

Death still flickered like fixed stars with its
Promises and mystic ammunition
Ready to pull the earth from under her
Like some stumped magic trick.

She called it a calling,

As her Poem goes;

                 I do not mind if it were bones

                                                            or a pearl button.