Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I Stand in My Window

If I stand in my window
naked in my own house
and press my breasts
against my windowpane
like black birds pushing against glass
because I am somebody

And if the man come to stop me
in my own house
naked in my own window
saying I have offended him
I have offended his

Gods

Let him watch my black body
push against my own glass
let him discover self
let him run naked through the streets
crying
praying in tongues.

-Lucille Clifton

Air Conditioners and Satellites

Heat triggered the initial events
and also the resistance
it spread from
region to region causing
the turning on and off
of air conditioners and fans.

We were driving down 494
I turned the lights off to see the stars.
He made me pull over.
He was a friend or at least on his way.
When I leaned over to see where he was pointing,
claiming it was Orion’s belt,
I felt his hips press forward
thats when I turned away.
A real riddle of the Sphinx.
No avoiding this disoriented detaching,
I felt something sad and awful
straining around the edges of my mouth
surface in my eyes.
Thats when I turned the brights back on.

The little power that remained
even after the night fell
caused only the artificial
satellites to become visible.

Claude Cahun

for future fussing, join them, pacing helps but ruins the wax on the hardwood floors

from cover to cover somethings remain under