Studies from Life

I keep a cabinet of dolls

nesting in shoebox cribs, a house

in miniature, wire chandelier.

threading through hair.

I might walk through the wall,

Clementina, while you powder

the mole on your clavicle.

You cherish that black slur.

Myself uncorsetted spilling through

Some evenings

we are never put down.

The world’s Girl strips us

to our slips. And forgets

to shut our eyes, leaves us

face down in the dark.

Mother’s coughing

from the chemicals—her throat latches

on air, a broken clasp—

as we devise another scene:

On Affliction Beauty waits. You’re A.

and I’m B. for the full exposure.

Take this night-blooming orchid

for a pelt, midnight’s smooth tail

as your only interlocutor.

The ghost of a hand as Mother

unscrews the lens cap. Daughters

of Collodion, chlorine sistered,

she would never usher us

into abstraction, flesh of her

flesh. See my earrings like spears

and beads black as the spider-

selves we swept from the house’s

bare corners? Sister,

let’s hide beneath this veil.