The encyclopedic body extends its skeletal hand,
moving between the capable white thighs.
Shy from the shock, language lifts her skirts,
the better to blur the subtle powdering of bones
with the shine of tongue on lips.
It is not the letters, filling their innocent intervals
like models on a runway, but the words,
watchful in their shared shadow,
which brood their power and their weakness
as colors bleed from left to right, blue to red.
Imagine the words sitting down,
either as guests at a casino floorshow,
or disbelieving attendants at an infant’s baptism.
Between them there is the drift of smoky ellipses,
opaque bubbles of ‘things not known’.
The insecurity of the moon is a shiver
on the retina of a laughing barmaid.
She covers her mouth, her nostrils flare,
but the shiver continues and if anyone
remains sober enough to notice, the oxygen
is thumbscrewed with distraction, diminishing
as rapidly as one might whisper Forgive me.