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Nutshell Kingdom: Found Poem
2008
If there were a woman
and if her feet would turn,
her toes point towards me, in
a certain honey colored light,
and her silk-black gown, slippery
and loose, would fall, just a little
as she reads to me, just enough
to show a slow breast, but not
entirely, like Faye Dunaway in
Chinatown, and if the rain
outside drums a black noise
and wraps the pane in
hot little flames, and if
her ankles smell of gardenia
and her laundry Downy Fresh,
and if some wine glows like
moonlit wheat and clings desperate
to the pink precipice of
her lower lip, a suicide reconsidered
too late, and falling, one
single abandoned drop dribbled
and shiny on her breastbone---
And if there were a woman
my eyes would sneak, Marlowe
like, up the Congo of her leg, to
the trapdoor kingdom where all
the crazies live, the palace
de feminin, Oh I would
not turn away, I would not
look back, I'd lose my mind,
sink in so deep as to drown
or be drowned as drumbeats
echo my retreat from the world
of men, Welcome to the Home
of the Gods, ambrosia and nectar---
if there were a woman
