Eyes & After 'Red Roses for Bronze, V'
by Laura Navratil
[ poetry - september 07 ]
Eyes
I know a woman who flicks out her contact lenses when she is drunk
the sticky wood and mindless hands on her thigh
soften
become digestible
she lays the lenses on a cocktail napkin, they dry
into half-moons of pale blue plastic, one folded and stuck to itself
as the men with their breath tap their fingers on dark dripping longnecks
pupils dilated, sniffing after this nearly-blind specimen
of pheromones and tits
only the next morning does the blur become a hindrance
as she feels her way home
across curbs,
over sidewalks.
After 'Red Roses for Bronze, V'
H.D. hid her fervor
and placed roses around the base of the bronze head
to endure. It remains.
I have no roses. Just
papersliced flesh
drunk on not enough
seasides. Where are the grains
of sand. They will be
my roses, cupped carried poured
around your missing bronze head
museumlike in its form, but gone,
surrounded by sand.
