The subtle hum of piano skin
peeling to the accompaniment
of the Richter scale—
these are the mornings that break
without the breath of sadness—
reveling in the birth of clarity
that comes with nudity, that spills
from the cracks in flesh—
she has been stripped like an orange,
exposed in the dressing room,
exercised by the latex-wearing priest
who empties God into single-fingered gloves,
fucked into honesty by obsidian mirrors—
she is contained in glass and cotton
and sexually frustrated fish and stuntmen
and calf bears and children’s socks
stretched over the star of death,
yet she cannot see herself in the surface
of the self-made lake that sticks to the faux marble basin—
these are the nights that gouge
at the leeches under the scalp, anchored—
18 hands, she was a big one
and handled her meals with a shallow throat,
but when faced with a rider, shot
straight through the tired wire, snapped
hungrily at harnesses, but kept the blinders
secure, kept the lather like a crown,
called them hatred, identified—
these are the days of mind-bees
that sing to the stars, the gaseous planets,
find only horses in the constellations.
-RW
wordmusician 