Her's is a soft kind of falling. With mattresses
stacked against the baseboards and buttered toast
cooling on the table. There is only one ghost in her
house, but sometimes there's a woman inside a wooden
horse awkwardly knocking and counting the stripes on
your blouse. The towns all have names like girls,
and the girls almost always named after flowers. You
can't swing a stick without hitting a Rose or a Violet.
Yesterday, a Lily spilling a bucket of rainwater into a
trough the size of a Chevy. She hangs nylons on
the shower rail and leans provocatively over an ironing
board.
Sometimes, there is lightning.
She's prettier, but I'm the quick
one.
There's no telling what we can do
with our throats, this frail pipe
that joins us. Rough lungs,
cloven heart. Each night,
I practice scales. Her,
a faltering soprano. In the bed,
we curl against each other like cats.
I have to feel out each limb
every morning to be sure.
Each lidded eye.
We learn to sound out words:
formaldehyde, thalidomide.
The labels of dark jars in the annex.
A man in Phoenix and can sell
you a half dozen punks for four
dollars,
a shrunken head for a quarter.
We have the most beautiful ankles,
hands that move against
our skirt like dull scissors.
We prefer to be addressed as Alice.
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