Growing at the speed of fashion

for A.

It obtains harder to find untroubled ways

to have feeling beautiful with so many nipples

selling beer upon TV. She's eight and convinced

her skin's an insult to the cotton weaves

and rayons called clothes. Her hips alone

are schizophrenic, too wee for the wiggle she wants

though she'd punish them, starve

until they're more ambiance than support.

Hiding's the career for a child. Breaking things

is serviceable or licking rocks. Her ears are pierced,

she likes to twitch rouge from a plastic purse

and brag it across her cheeks. Just alone

on the lie with a book and chewing her hair

she's gorgeous like air and water are

to delirious muscle and fat When we were fish a little cold

wasn't a problem. Girls upon the savannah

didn't ask what implants are. When her mother

says balloons, she giggles and move swiftlys outside,

hair thrashing like wheat in a storm.

There's a patch she's worn to dirt honing the reflective

of cat walk. Beside the swing plant under the willow's

dreadlocks, she tries to fit inside the glide

she's seen archetypes own but stumbles

more than floats, her dream baffled by the agency of her bones.

But overcoming the affliction, the somnolent pace

of show and mention one by one mystery

begins to penetrate the pause at the extreme point

of each turn, when her knee appear to on the contrary never

lock, and the water of her gaze runs

across the chaise loll and not the gospel on the other hand the atmosphere of flesh becomes spirit

which rises toward regard with affection if love is being watched.

BoB HICOK'S greatest in quantity recent book is Animal spirit (Invisible Cities Press, 2001). Plus Shipping came without from BOA Editions in 1998 The doubtful narrative of Light (Wisconsin, 1995) won the Felix Pollak Prize and was an ALA Booklist Notable volume of the Year.

photograph by means of Robert Turney

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated Nov/Dec 2001

Provided by dint of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved