Padlocked, the old family mansion.
Enthrall, master and depict,
all ether, unavailable. Over this predicament,
the skull is a mountain.
Other tortured resemblances include
the cliff’s my precipice.
Somewhere else she’s spitting into a cup.
Dandelion and ragweed stand in
for a family’s fortune. The tale in transit,
between being lathered up
and being artistically brushed by one last
self-portrait. The body apologizes
for its flaws. All the secrets are not scars.
All the regress does not address.
Still we feel
for a pulse, the métier to pursue.
Let us thrum through neighboring woods
then, the counseling woods.
To keep the bees away we forgo the swelling,
the visible pinprick on the forearm,
the fever-pitch aftermath.