12-31-2017, 12:36 AM
ODE TO THE TAMPON by SHARON OLDS
Inside-out clothing;
queen’s robe;
white-jacketed worker who clears the table
prepared for the feast which goes uneaten;
hospital orderly; straitjacket
which takes, into its folded wings,
the spirit of the uncapturable one;
soldier’s coat;
dry dock for the boat not taken;
seeker of the red light of stars
which have ceased to be before we see them;
bloodhound;
unhonored one; undertaker;
secret-keeper;
you who in the cross-section diagram,
before the eyes of a girl child,
glide into potential space,
out of the second-stage rocket’s cardboard cylinder,
up beyond the atmosphere,
where no one has gone before;
you who began life as a seed in topsoil,
you who blossomed into the air like steam from a whale’s blow-hole,
you who were compressed into a dense calyx,
nib which dips into a forty-year river;
mute calligrapher—we write you here.
Inside-out clothing;
queen’s robe;
white-jacketed worker who clears the table
prepared for the feast which goes uneaten;
hospital orderly; straitjacket
which takes, into its folded wings,
the spirit of the uncapturable one;
soldier’s coat;
dry dock for the boat not taken;
seeker of the red light of stars
which have ceased to be before we see them;
bloodhound;
unhonored one; undertaker;
secret-keeper;
you who in the cross-section diagram,
before the eyes of a girl child,
glide into potential space,
out of the second-stage rocket’s cardboard cylinder,
up beyond the atmosphere,
where no one has gone before;
you who began life as a seed in topsoil,
you who blossomed into the air like steam from a whale’s blow-hole,
you who were compressed into a dense calyx,
nib which dips into a forty-year river;
mute calligrapher—we write you here.