Does she see with her stamens? Cry in pollen
and bees? A face in the desert
must wilt, but look at her saunter, a swagger
of hips, a leading thigh. Like a mockingbird
chest the curve of her belly,
shoulders dabbed with the scent of stature.
Waterspouts spin from their coasts, cross
prairies when she calls and this man is bending
into fossils following her.
She’s the axis
around which he oscillates and she’s all
that he sees. Horizon and gauze.
He’s a hula-hoop at her slender waist,
her turning torque the centripetal force
that keeps him in orbit. A pencil sketch
of a man, all stem. She’s front and center
on the wall above my bed and from below
I see the tossed fragments of bone
at her feet, how easily he could be erased.
She’s the type of woman people change
their shirts for. She must be why I wake up
in the middle of every night, and strip
to skin in sheets,
my scalp a sweat fire of blooming asters.