Pressed Poppy

You are flat, you are flat,
Fixed between two slides like
A germ, firm. Flat. I lionize.
Brother of the cry of the back door,
Brother of the bat.

Trimmed of matter, trimmed

Of fat. Witnessed only in nudged knick

Knacks, or in a touch, a paralytic pressing

Of this, of that. You seem disappointed, though.

You seem a bit detached.

Black concentrate. The same as
In your grandmother’s frames – 
You are monochrome, revolving in an
In-between state, yet to navigate to grip

The knob. There is no knob. Not yet.

A cross-stitch wheel with your thread
A bridal train. It scrapes like a butcher’s babe

And here it is, the rift. Mobile in daylight, twilight,

All light, you walk. O look at those limbs,

Slim, black legumes in a crystal suit.

Ironclad, it accommodates.

You asked. Implored. Now mother moons lend

A poor, poor excuse for a voice. A sharpened sigh

At night, an audible frieze. Flat, pressed
Poppy, the glass is not your crutch. 
It boxed you up all Christmas-like, all

Chinese.

So lustrous, so compact, scalp smoothed

By the stuff of trees.

Dry, indelible, flat. Pellucid, with an upright riddled

Facsimile rightfully cast.  The onus of a

Caryatid, holding up this crust.

It made you useful, little loaf beneath the

Garden. Glassy aftermath – you hang horizons

On your shoulders like stoles, like holes unbidden

In the matte. It heard you ask and ask and

Ask. That swindler. That savior. That ashen acrobat.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH