Shell delicate, the green chin’s cracked: broken
waxwing, broken wryneck.  The down ups, bristling,
kinking into curls.  A fly-specked plaster,
a cambric snicked with stitches: this grizzling

frets against the grain.  Scrit, scrit: the lie bare-faced,
the whiskered fibbery--lily-white boys, cheek
by jowl among the stubble.  Peach-fuzz to 
blue-beard, she’s caught in their swart penumbra.

Like the gossamer thread sprung from her arm
a full three inches when she was eight, it
opened her eyes.  Out of the glass each barb
of it speaks:  Trust me.  I hide what you are.