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Cynthia Manick Page 2 Dear Black Dress
don’t speak to me
don’t speak to me about
the hot haze
that keeps you
up past midnight
the groove held tight
in your double-stitched
inseam it conjures men
like
blooming jasmine
its scent swells
the mouth
the triangle cinch two quarters down
pit stop
to silhouette
shines a light on legs a well-lit
street to a body
of currents
i’m not blind to your sorcery
the sweet feed
of darkness
the way damp air travels
from cotton to skin
from skin to mind
you wanna dance—
with all the shadows
that bones make
swallow octaves
cut through corseted lungs
hips
i try to calm you
sedate you with pink cardigans
beige brown shawls
but it’s like covering some hump
mama deity
on the prowl
no marrow safe
-Appeared in Sou’wester
To Speak About What Isn’t Spoken
The villains should keep you busy.
Jackals and thieves. Holy relics. Stones
of Jordan. Textures of full-bodied
peaches. Mating rites of turtles, or that
morning
light which stomps in offering Zen
secrets and celestial songs.
Did you ever stand guard over
the gate of Thebes? See spears
carved in the backsides of others?
The sharp angles of limbs were bare
yet covered like a pillow in its
white casing.
Something is growing in my belly.
In dreams I’m alone in a chapel
counting down the days. The tapestries
are draped in smiles. Candles are unlit.
The air is a pew-shaped box and you
grant wishes.
Something is singing in her bones
and has settled. In dreams her arms
are scarless and smooth. A brocaded
dress filled with silken plumes, petals
and the scent of plums. Calcified bones
look light and golden and you
grant wishes.
There are planes flying over Beirut.
Steel-dipped wings create wounds
in the sky. Rudders and shrapnel
clamor in the gloom, drowning out
the low pulse of valve machines
beeping in this room.
Can some things stand? Can some things
change? Or will you banish her, like your
other pets– the mammoth, the bison, and
the dinosaur?
-Appeared in The Cossack Review
© Copyright, 2015,
Cynthia Manick. |