Though they’re slightly eroded, one still might surmise
the commanding force in those tensile coppery legs,
their responsive bent, their brutal extent. I draw up
into myself at their coming; I stumble as one cast out.
Look down on me. I, fallen, would meet him, fallen,
in the blunt blue light of morning. My angry god
would contest his angry god, to clutch at sheer cloth
and recompense of lean, fusible flesh. He was once lost wax.
I long to know his vulgar tongue. To feel the cool verdigris
of his shanks, the clasping down upon my own extremities.
I want to be with the one who will not have me. Will not,
despite our mortal errors, which seem terribly to twin.
from Poetry Northwest WEBMore by D.A. Powell from the library
Copyright © D.A. Powell
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.