Not only the nip and tuck of her skin quilting
milk bent bones; not only the somersaulting
head spin of her light skin spread atilt
the deep of her lemon-puffed pillow and quilt
lifting into the citron-charged air; but even the lilt
of strings from the speaker on her well-built
mockernut cabinet, the light from her half-
opened window and the high heckled laugh
of girls promenading past her bedroom,
scrickety-screeching over each other’s lampoon
of a pizza-faced boy they tortured all afternoon;
even the snow-capped peaks of her importune
shoulder-bones, the squidged soles of her feet,
the daylight’s tufts in the meadowsweet
sky charged with godwits, lemon-puffed billows
and Boeings: all these things sink below
her arse-through-mouth fear of the aeroplane’s kaboom,
its flaring nose dive-bombing her bedroom;
her fear of turning cloud, her skin become cotton,
a lemon-puffed pastry shred to pieces in the rotten
sky and windblown, turned to tears
cut like arrowheads, salt-fired and clear,
pitter-patter-clattering her window
as I plunge her lip-stained pillow
and quilt, her light citrus skin
with hate mail, emissions, election results breaking in
as we lie there, beating, dead to our bones
in her lemon-puffed bower of words, and sticks, and stones.