Who was I—lying in the cattails and the milkweed’s flue,
In the tiny adjectival prows of leaves of sugar maples and of great
Oak trees; the burrs of newly dying things were in my hair.
A girl in gentle murder in the bowl of being there.
Nothing was rhetorical.
Everything was sepia.
It was a time when my father may have been alive.
In the Gargoyle Store, I buy a gryphon off the rack.
When I go home, I am Solange in Jean Genet’s The Maids.
The production moves through the sooty basements of churches
Full of persons wrapped in the coppery leather limbs of methadone.
Their arms are scarified and wracked with rain.
I am still almost a virgin, technically.
I have made promises I may not keep, go on with my
Soliloquy and was some kind of beautiful.