The girl with her head on the pillow, unfastening
her pearl-buttoned blouse, (a door
opens into the color
of another life) becomes
a woman she does not know, form
from her dreams. Stretching
under a tree, she hears
the thresh of leaf on leaf; she crouches
below eaves and watches
rain-water trickle from wrist to hand—a little
taste. A year from now
she’ll stand by the side of the road
waiting for the gathered storm to break,
head turned this way, that way,
precious ear, tiny tragus,
and thunder treading the passage,
guarded hole, dark crevasse to her mind.
Barn Bluff
I don’t want to slander it: that advice
you tried to give me but
how could you know exactly what trees
I’d be under during the storm—“my first
real boyfriend,” she says, “Don’t close
the bedroom door” “not
that I don’t trust you,” she says but then what didn’t you
trust? did you see me blooming, did I look happy
in my new egg-sac? so clearly not virginal / Jezebel
and I hadn’t fingered the silk of my first veil? “at least wait
until you’re in college,”
*
he says and I see
being good (oh dusty jewel) saved me from graffiti but where’s the reward
for having obediently spared the world a sight of my
nipples (I can barely say it) / should I have taken
my chance—I’m not
china it turns out and yet I’ve gotten my cracks anyway. Do they
wish they hadn’t, those wild girls—I see now it was trivial,
a flesh curtain, nothing beyond, but you made it
Snow White’s apple, you made it “carnal knowledge”
and well I finally ate it. Does this mean
I can go back and sleep with my college professor
*
(I had to bite hard to pierce its skin, I’m telling you)
I can stick out my chest
instead of keeping it in? wet dress of shame—why,
when I was never so special in my uncut state.
*
I’m learning now. Wish I could undo
the not-doing. I had whole valleys to explore. My missed
door: could I have been one of you graffiti girls, groping in ultrablue
on rock face, railroad trestle, Sherrie
hearts Greg to loud music & long past midnight
Mapping
London, 1675. Dead coals kicked aside to build
the new cathedral are centuries-cold bones
of Diana’s priestess. When she lived,
poppies bloomed west of the citadel.
*
You climb stairs, follow signs, detours.
You don’t know where you’re going
but someone does, has directed you. A subway
is an entrance to underground rivers. Once
the Waldgate flowered through Roman camps;
still those helmets tumble, tarnishing,
and dancing girls’ bangles. How deep
do you know you stand, waiting
for a swaying carriage?
*
Along the river every spire wore clouds;
we rowed our long boat slowly, listened
for the drop of stone or a body, shone
a lantern at the dark water below.
The young girls’ dreams—best
not to talk about that—ripe fruit,
broken gardens, Adonis cut to ribbons—
*
A new murderer will put Jack to shame. A body
simple as its birth, one wound in the antique location
cadged from incunabula. Sacrifice against the new
world order, he will say. A simple implement: steel
found in any Soho kitchen. We are all capable.
*
Once this was a plain where a woman sketched a white horse
in lime.
*
In an alley it was done, she felt loose
below the waist and had that moment
before her finding to crane her neck and see
the dome of St. Paul’s high above the city
to the west—something that had come
out of fire. By the time they wound her
in a white sack maps had been drawn
of the court, its doors, how close to water.
Lightsey Darst received an NEA Fellowship for Literature. She has also been awarded two Minnesota State Arts Board Grants, a residency at the Anderson Center in Red Wing, Minnesota, and an AWP Intro Journals Award. Her recent work is published or forthcoming in The Antioch Review, The Literary Review, Gulf Coast, and New Letters.