in her skin, lilac to forsythia
polygons of porphyry
inscribed with scratch marks
which outline the subcutaneous’
succulent shadows
like the mortar between tesserae
in a Pompeian mosaic.
Unfurling, polychrome
peacocks: think, emeralds
winking through the black
carapace of pyroclastic rock,
think goblets of purpura.
Penumbra, and penumbra
and not a freckle left
solitary in space
---no plane of skin
unorbited. Instead
moles, birthmarks, glint,
clots in the rubble
of a sacked city,
strings in a supernova.
Note
This poem was patterned on an equation lifted from the first 7 stanzas of Mark Doty's "A Display of Mackerel" which may be read here.
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