Winter 2016

if nothing rhymes with orange toe polish, why
do i wear it? to make my feet stand out
when i step out. they are my alibi,
my good excuse, my reasonable doubt,

my shield. my nails are a caution: don't touch,
don't shoot. this orange-with-a-hint-of-red screams
of confident fuck-yous, but won't do much
to repel ghosts or bullets. the street seems
safe as any place else. my home's no less
impenetrable than my body, and
my skin's no tougher than my heart. just guess
what scares me most: the shit others have planned
in fear of me. so long as i'm deemed danger,
i won't bite my lip, but paint my toes oranger.

It must be the distance that makes those ponies seem
so magical in their yard up on the hill.
Or the way this morning's particular angle
of sunlight blanches the wet grass, bathing them
in blurred glare, as if they stood outside of time.
Or I did, and this walk you knew so well
had freed me from the past so you were still
alive here in the world, not just in dream.
And yet the ponies set us both in time.
I remember you thought they were too small to ride:
just pets, unlike the bulldog near the gate.
Unlike the deer, they'd linger, unafraid.
Alone in their world now, they stare at mine
Calmly. There's no need to know their names.

For every mumbled song, we mothers clapped,
faking joy-until that boy claimed the stage's glow,
his fingers lifting, setting, slipping, slap
to the table, red plastic stacks and rows 
blooming and collapsing like epochs
in the hands of time. He lives for this,
his mom to me above the roar, eyes locked
to her enormous camera. He practices 
for hours. Well, he's good, he's really good,
I told her. I have seventeen scrapbooks
already, she added, and then, I couldn't
have any more. The doctors looked
inside me. The boy piled his red hoard
high again, all the emptiness toward the floor.