Ekphrasis

She seemed tick-tock mean, that little girl,

like her brain slapped against the side

of a concrete head (like she didn’t know how else

to act anyway.)

Surrounded by air under the palegray sky that

alluded to cold, she was remote, reflected in the

mirror-puddles from the rain three hours prior,

and the curious flowering grasses that now slouched,

limp, their color like diffused-with-ashes.

She wore a plaid jumper that brings to mind god,

and it was whiteandblue. Heavy socks, rocks, galoshes,

mud-speckled constellations effaced her front.

She was about ten years old, from the looks of it,

and she still had those glorious goldenhaired knees, and

an odd slice of mouth (red. red. red.)

This is not a poem about me.

This baby smoked a cigarette; it glowed

orangely, a baby jack o’lantern or the radio dial that’s

beside the kitchen sink, and above her head a

hoary aureole and totem pole of smoke slid up to

meet its own…

Her eyes receded into her head like black planets,

and it terrified to think of what she thought.

Probably about the dog she’d found that morning

next to a glassy puddle, its dead left eye

and right respectively reflecting

heavenandhell through cobweb cataracts.

And how its black nipples were cracked and sad tail wet,

how its black tongue licked no hand…

She was fireheaded. I could not catch my breath.

(2007)