42opus

is an online magazine of the literary arts.

6 September 2006 | Vol. 6, No. 3

fret

Lets say a woman's heart

is like a windup bird.

The conservatory filled

with oranges and the cellar

disordered, unstable

with the pull of thieves


gathering outside the windows.

I've invented this: the panic,

copper tongued and shaken.

I'm dizzied, dulcet.

A thin layer of graphite

blooming beneath my skin.


And here, my sleight of hand,

my tour de force,

skirts come all undone

and tapping out code beneath

the dressing table. I am

impossibly lovely, impossibly

fixed against the horizon.

Any attempt at flight

ruining all the furniture.

About the author:

Kristy Bowen's work has appeared recently in Rhino, Cranky, and Diagram, and is forthcoming in Swink and Columbia Poetry Review. She lives in Chicago, where she edits the online zine wicked alice and runs dancing girl press, which publishes chapbooks by women authors. She is the author of two forthcoming collections, the fever almanac (Ghost Road Press, 2006) and feign (New Michigan Press, 2007).

Source:

http://42opus.com/v6n3/fret

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