Sex With Trees and Other Things Equally Responsive Rebecca Lu Kiernan

Damage Control

A copper lamp blinks from the paint chipped gazebo.
Pre-hurricane night air bows the cobalt willows.
Now I see my choices are black lacey nightgowns
in a fortune cookie.
As a child, I fell in love with an ancient
doctor's doll, a pleasant jade woman, nude
on a bed or coffin, never knowing she revealed
the ailments of a thousand women, killed by modesty.
I waited for her to rise, lips swollen for her lover.
Our lives run parallel,
You, a tourist on this sugar beach;
Me, a damage assessor,
Slicing the shells of petrified turtles,
Nursing the slick formaldehyde skins of frogs.

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