The Only Narrative

Thin clingy fashionable cotton
watch cap – horizontal soft pastel
stripes tight and chic against her skull –
means of a disguise pulled so far
down her brow into her eyes –
resting like a rippled wavelet
on the top part of her wire-rims –

you couldn’t not imagine what the world
must look like from her swaddled
point-of-view: something glimmering
in front of her like half-dreamed
swatches of a half-forgotten
neighborhood – swift shards of human
presence chopped-off and peripheral:

Picasso’s cubist body parts
in Turner’s swirling mists; she listed
forward gracefully enough:
the spare amalgamated sifting stuff
of twenty-year-old slimness: newly
sprung into a skinny young
half-womanhood. I do not know why

her jeaned leanness, capped elusive
newness make me think of this –
why it seems to pry her clarity
into a slightly sighing and regretful
foam. Theme she somehow
gives this poem: there only is one
narrative: trying to get home.


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