Her Bid for Freedom (poem)
Her Bid for Freedom
She could never bear to be herself
Dressed in a red coat, dandyish, a cynosure
“People stare.”
These words were for the angel at her side
Known by puckering air, a fragmented hair’s-width
or garment’s hem
One enveloping unseen form
That moves through leaves and makes
Crushed mould-remains of leaves
Rise and sink again
Black-encircled crimson echoes like a train passing
signal posts
The angel’s wings span the street from chimneytop to
chimneytop
Allying stranger’s houses, bricking over
Her bid for freedom
The faces she had seen
Those in windows pulling curtains back
A pallid mist on a water glass, with a siren’s whistle
A hollow and lye-etched pair of eyes
I believe they’re still where I saw them last, and always will―
But you never leave me now
She never leaves
Something like a shroud
Done in netting drapes her and each knot connecting
Flares as though the light were catching
The bristles of a Christmas garland
“I am made of washed bones sunk, gathered
Hands torn apart and severed
I am made by drops and by drops as the
cavern’s hourglass
in an eon grows
The jagged upthrust and the weeping fall
Will meet, and you will meet
Your day and mine draw close”
Her Bid for Freedom
See more poetry in The Poor Belabored Beast
Adverse Possession
(2015, Stephanie Foster)