2 June 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 2

Tress

by HANNAH CRAIG

Through gold, a comb shimmers. Not the red

cock-comb of sureness, but here, a hen-comb,

a toothed darling.

Through gold, through the white gold,

thoughts sputter, move as they do

into the hot engine beneath,

muscles elaborate as pistons.

Under the roll of trained wheat, under the glaze

of spun-sugar on the brow, off the face,

your mouth precipitates a word. I'll be cuckold

to that face. I'll be the horned goat,

devout over a delicious shrub. You the petal—

so I'm in the garden of myself, then,

eating my own rose. You the tin can

beneath a fall, hot iron in the hands

of tinctured sepia. Curl this.

Pin through the thorax. Which is how they hold

a coiffure of gangling geese, a swan's beak

hooked over the high, white forehead.

Most important—a nose to the nosegay,

a scintillation of kelp, clove.

Tell me, the underneath

perpetually wet, a mildew thickness

like unmown earth, this spring's

maple. Yes, underneath

there is sweet, my honey,

your head of gold.