agley

agley\ uh-GLEE \  , adjective;Off the right line; awry; wrong.

A family of clothes aligned on the line

From smallest to biggest article, pinned

Dresses billow like jellyfish, no spines,

While pant legs bend at the knees, kicked in

By the wind, which is brittle, sour-smelling
Like rain. The air, pregnant, like a woman

Heavy with child, the drying clothes hang

Between hips, old wooden poles that bow in

Tempered by fifty years' weight of this.

The old woman feels the rain in her own bones

Sits at the window, massaging her wrists,

She will go, take down the clothes, alone

As always, as is constant, as is right,

Cry the clothes, flapping on the line like kites.

ephebe

ephebe\ ih-FEEB \ , noun; A young man. 

How is a young man like a girl? He isn't 
Awkward like she is awkward, softly turning.
He is hard, wiry, stiff. Perhaps he is 
The stem and she, the petal, one yearning 

For the other, but also, sometimes, stems 
Want to curl 'round each other and petals 
Prefer to fall and lay with their hems 
Overlapping. Soft with soft; metal with metal. 

Can you tell them this is wrong? Or if 
The girl is hard like wood and the boy 
Succulent as a fall pear, would you sift 
Them? Or force them, as if they were toys?


His soft skin thin? Hers like a rock? 
Pear juice is blood on a chopping block.

To O'Hara

Sitting near a Grand Central

Station stairway on the floor I stare 

At all the passing people dressed

In hurry Rushing from this place

To that place of worry while those

Next to me snap pictures trying

To catch process in static

A souvenir of the city's constancy

Always people moving, a weave

A right, a left, all a tapestry A picture

Of the stars mapped over time It all blurs

One person, one long trajectory

Sitting still I feel still as a boulder

In a river I will corrode, erode over time

I would But my legs prevent this My job

My life I am a wife to it Married, joined,

A shadow. Only against this wall

Do we rest together and it is poetry

Just an idea I have And then it is there 

Coincidence, who believes in it?

I think about you and you are there I don't

Think about you and there you are 

Answering a question I had only 

Just thought of An answer you had

Only just found As you weaved

Through the hurried crowd.

sylph

sylph \ silf \  , noun;


1. A slender, graceful woman or girl.
2. (In folklore) one of a race of supernatural beings supposed to inhabit the air.

How is she supposed to inhabit the air? This sylph

This slender girl that knows not yet how

To be a woman, graceful, capable in her slenderest

Arms, her smallest ankles, her bones that only

Years ago could break so easily, falling from a tree.

More a baby bird than the dove that takes flight,

That calls to the wind, to a lover, a future

Mate, who calls back, who waits, who knows

He will not have to wait much longer. And this girl

Stands at the roots and looks up at the limbs

     And is suddenly afraid to climb. She forgets

     The footholds. She only sees where she slipped before.

     She remembers the sound of the snap and her scream

     That rustled the leaves as the birds burst into flight.

Masticate

masticate\ MAS-tih-kayt \, transitive verb: To grind or crush with or as if with the teeth in preparation for swallowing and digestion; to chew

It all started with the olives and how they sat there, immersed in the mixture of brown vinegar and shards of rosemary, in a pool. Or, who was she kidding, it started with the red, red cherry at the bottom of the martini glass, juicy with alcohol, the last candy at the bottom of the jar. And then how it all spilled onto the table, her clumsiness insurmountable. And he so quick to tell her so. Nevertheless the puddle spread and began its slow decent to the floor in drops and rivulets. The rosemary falling like canoes over a waterfall. No one would have survived. With a drawn sigh, he walks to the kitchen to retrieve the paper towels which will soak up her drunkard's mess. She could not swallow his disdain. No throat can stretch to fit the ocean. And because she is in the state to do so, she fluidly removes her shirt by lifting it with arms crossed over her head and throws it to the floor. As the fabric touches down, like a parachute from the sky, the brown liquid seeps through the white shirt and the coloring could be mistaken for rusty water, old blood. And before he can return from the kitchen to balk at what she has done, she leaves it all there and stumbles to the bedroom and onto the bed, face down, arms above her head, as if she is diving. When he starts to yell, she imagines that she is a child again, holding herself under water in the deep end of the pool, where anyone's voice can only reach her as a far-off echo, and her body feels weightless.

Muliebrity

muliebrity\myoo-lee-EB-ri-tee\, noun:

The state of being a woman.

Mother never told me it would be like this.  I hit my leg with my fist but it doesn't feel like me.

I look over at you; your hands on the wheel, ten and two. Always ten and two. I face forward again and close my eyes. It's so bright outside; I can see the shadows of the trees as we drive by them; as they slide over my eyelids. It's sunny and the windows are open just a crack. There had been talking; there had been the radio, but now there was nothing. Just the sun coming through the windows and the click of the highway and my eyes closing.

I sink lower into the passenger seat, put my feet up onto the hard plastic of the dash. Underneath is the airbag that would save me but break my legs. Send them crashing into my rib cage. I glance over at the speedometer and see we are going at around 70 miles an hour. Scrunched up like this, I am a bullet inside of a bullet.

Outside, the trees continue to pass with the time and my eyes run with them.

Zetetic

zetetic\ zeh-TEH-tic \, adjective; 

Proceeding by inquiry; investigating

There once was a girl who got up every day and was happy. Her first thought was of how rested she felt and how bright was the light coming through the window. Even when it was raining outside and the clouds covered the sun, she would notice how the window signs and the street lamps reflected off the drops of water and she appreciated the sound of it falling. There was nothing that could make her sad. She did not always smile, but she always meant to, and when she did it only vaguely made you think of mannequins. The kind of mannequins with no heads standing in store windows and wearing the clothes that you want. The kind with every outfit piece placed just-so and glowing with rightness and sharp with color.