In Words and Pictures Told

Missed Meanings

Dodging the edge of a poem,
her eyes cross – like God's eyes,
and she flips over like the tail of a coin.

Jammed between the pages of Hard Times
is a bent in half bookmark, with watercolor beetles,
who swarm and reproduce by millions,

amassing inside the book like so many stars as
freckles on her Irish face.  Their wings flutter with
a disobedient discontent, and her arms

swing with the hope that running farther,
running faster will disband the weight around
her waist.  But it doesn't seem as though

her weight or the beetles or the tail side of the coin
will ever feature in the ineffable plan, and somewhere
she is drinking an evening glass of water and tucking

herself in at night.


~hammeh