orchids and pagodas painted on them.
She fanned her face with these and made her bangs flap.
What else? A pin made of a real seashell,
a set of tortoise-shell combs, a rhinestone bracelet.
More intriguing: an oblong of black lace,
a shawl or a mantilla, that she always
spread out before her eyes while she decided
just how to drape it. Looking through its fine,
close-knotted mesh gave her a view like one
she could have got through a sooty window screen.
Two or three hats with feathers of no color
she’d ever seen on a bird sat carefully nested.
Best of all, always to be admired,
there was a brown, weaselly-looking fur piece,
that ringed her neck and dangled down her front,
the eyes studding its narrow nut of a head
inky black and hard as rock, the nose
rubbery-feeling like an old eraser.
A little chain could cinch the snout and tail
together, but the fixed jaws wouldn’t bite.
There, in the little stuffy almost-attic,
trying these in their different combinations
before a mirror, practicing to be old
and regal, she could lose track of the time.
She grew oblivious to the parlor voices
talking about people she’d never known.
Finally, when her appearance satisfied her,
she paced grandly down, the funeral veil
swathing her hair, the spineless animal
bobbling to her waist. Her mother gasped
and clapped her hands. Her great-aunt smiled briefly,
then looked into her teacup. Years would pass
before the festooned girl would realize what
her hostess must have seen: her bygone self
and her dead sisters, flaunting these fine items
when they were new, and later not so new.
The First Mosquito
Still warm, still damp. Twilight.
Emboldened to impinge,
the whining parasite
administers a twinge,
a punctual siphoning
announcing summer’s prime.
Too small to call a sting,
the lump she left this time
vouches for blood she needed
to spawn what will in turn
go forth to do as she did.
We might as well adjourn —
indoors. With skin awoken
to June so pointedly,
we’ll settle for one token
of such phlebotomy.
A Field of Goldenrod
Midas, your fabled gleaming touch
would be hard put to burnish much
that ocher crop across the road —
like some erupting mother lode,
proliferating uncontrolled
back to the treeline, solid gold.
In truth, I doubt you could enhance
one August field’s extravagance
by any glitter you could lend.
This is the wealth of summer’s end;
an alchemy within the weed
will flaunt itself to scatter seed,
and summer, in a mood to splurge,
will outdo any thaumaturge.
Anthology Piece
Why, I sometimes wonder, out of all
the spirited conceptions of my Maker,
am I the chosen one? Reprinted ceaselessly,
misprinted sometimes (I have had death appear
in place of dearth, and yes, there is a difference),
memorized by the multitude — why me?
Something in my unmistakable rhythm
seems to have taken readers by the ear;
or could it be my undemanding scenery,
dusty road pointing ahead to sunset?
Woven snugly together with accustomed
sentiments toward all that’s transitory . . .
What could be simpler? By this time I might
be sick of it myself, were I not bound
to bless my access to eternity.
As for the man who set my sky ablaze,
he grew to loathe my popular appeal,
but of course wasn’t able to disown me.
Once I was plumper: seven lines, some good,
didn’t survive the last slash of his pen.
(You’d never know: he didn’t save the drafts.)
Now I am all that keeps his name alive,
pressed by hundreds of pages
