Jumping Off: Sand (poem)

 

 

 

Sand

 

doll-forms at craft shops bald sightless blockheads

you should watch tutorials on airbrushing rose    into cheeks

think of a doll for every ethnicity

the minefield mechanics of noticing shades     of blush

Populate a scheme to become a catalogue name

with burials in a fold and tab-together box

they were smoothed and glossed to make them shine

they were thin girls, pretty

deserving pretty names of loved girls

royalty in a pageant of velvet rope secluded

this tissue-paper nation lacked a peasantry

 

the terminus finds you tidally deciding

you misunderstand who they are

your ridged toenails in saltwater youthen

your crusty heels shed and soften

some of what lies dead seems rotting

these even scavengers ignore     or shy from

some bring atoms of plutonium

 

survivors of the wrong type

not rally from the shower of comet dust

that fills the missing slot

You rise, in what should be an Aran sweater

chinos rolled-up

You, a slim clotheshorse

corkscrewing and fluttering, your hair

your abundant hair, your

garments breezing to your bones romantically

You recall in movies you’d watched

figures in slow motion run on beaches

camel-gaited amblers toeing wavelets

wistful piano tinkles and chordlets

strings bursting like flights of gulls

whuh-uh-uh-uh-uuuuuuuuuuuuh

whuh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uuuuuuuuh

whuh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh     Uh-uh-uh

you glare, you sing

other strollers were not born in nostalgia

 

 

 

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Sand

Steaming

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2020, Stephanie Foster)