New Poem

I’ve been working on the poem for a while, and decided not to blog this weekend until it was finished.

There’s a good story to go along with the legs, but for now, suffice it to say that I have a friend who owns a pair of mannequin legs.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.



Legs: Decending, Asending

~ for EDS

Because you have always been attracted to ordinary mysteries,
because you understand the exquisite language of women,
it was no surprise to see a pair of mannequin legs leaning
against your bookcase—alabaster white, fiberglass,
perfectly shaped in their stillness. No static arms
and hard breasts to complicate things, just the legs,
with a metal rod jutting above the hips
like a sawed-off spine. She was the secret you carried
before your gained access into the elsewhere of girls.
In polite conversation, she became the unmade coffee table
or floor lamp you’d one day make when no other explanation
would do. But how can anyone not be enraptured with this
articulation of woman? How can you not lay a hand on them,
your fingers touching those thighs, the curve of her hip,
the peak of her knees, her cool legs equidistant,
her open stance ski slopes of desire? Imagine her
once a model for hosiery or some other finery,
something black laced and unmentionable
covering her mesmerizing loveliness—
the imagination and its strange discretions.
This nude figure, truncated, always descending
and ascending the stuff of dreams,
as your narrative in the fetish of men.