Pageant Mouth

Not only you,

as this you did,

stood just beyond what

little I thought I knew,

patient as a pretty ox,

beribboned as in feast time,

that I might parade you

for the whole trance-ridden town,

unfurling my sex in secret

against your decorated spine.

Astride that way, watching

the village scene scroll past

the face of your face, I keep my

handful to your pageant mouth

and eat the radiant blossom crushed

like memory beneath your toe.



 —The Winter Anthology, Vol. 9, 2019