Magnolia
        

       In you
       almost always
       there were two.

       Performer –
       small words,
       small back
       ascending descent
       hips held high,
       a dark bouquet
       to smell,
       to touch.

       And again,
       there was you,
       recipient –
       pliant, a vessel
       that knew no filling;
       convex, swollen
       to touch,
       to taste,
       to part.

       And what, shall we say, 
       connected these two?

       One cobbled street,
       one linteled door,
       one painted number
       marking the place
       where a spare, plank floor
       groaned,
       then slumbered
       the width,
       the depth,
       of that quick
       rented room?

       You were 
       a flower –
       false
       or true –
       buried in sheets
       then white,
       now tinted blue,
       by scent,
       by sorrow
       of spent afternoons.


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