Siren |
What is it like to be you,
climbing like a vine around air,
clinging with indolent leafness
to seemingly nothing, suspended
up there on the stage, dropping sighs
and half laughs between phrases
like sudden vintage grapes?
I watch you weave your words,
sway and lean into space, but
it is not so much your words I hear,
as you, up there, rustling,
fragrant of salt air and hibiscus,
promising fragile secrets
and ripe womanhood.
Longing rises through the floor
like steam as I imagine men
crashing into the rocks below you,
as I imagine what it must be like to be you
with a voice so deadly
and so sweet.
(previously appeared in Moontide Press' Poet of the Month Feature September 2010)
copyright 2015
Deborah Edler
Brown |