The tracings around my edges? Your black silk stockings. My ripped sweater. The hard knots of your outrage. I hear peanuts spilling down an air shaft. I touch the line of your thin brown lips. The line of your eye, the other eye. An eggy substance slushes through our nappy lashing. This is all vanity in the mirror. I trace a line through the memory of us. We get enraptured in our own natures. We've got a lot of nerve. Everybody else is taking another approach. We play with each other's toes on pink-green sheets. Here we are in summer sunlight with the nerve to touch our own mystery. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...YOUNG SAMMY'S FIRST WILD OATS by GEORGE SANTAYANA LYING IN THE GRASS by EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE SEVEN TIMES FOUR [ - MATERNITY] by JEAN INGELOW SCORN NOT THE LEAST by ROBERT SOUTHWELL THE SURPRISE AT TICONDEROGA [MAY 10, 1775] by MARY ANNA PHINNEY STANSBURY A RHYME by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE CAVALRY CROSSING A FORD by WALT WHITMAN |