The woman with the radiance
of nuclear spillage waggles
an ear at a bothering fly
and tags shut the envelope of a day
with a dry out-pointing tongue.
Her eyes are inefficient sentinels
harried with orders, grim
as cardinals facing ordure.
She has windows in her backside,
sits sharply,
sees everything.
Her loneliness once owned
and boundaried me
like a fence
flecked at base with shepherd’s purse.
She bought me with a fingertip,
raised once, a low bid. Now
she wants more than my impeachment,
has my dossier remembered,
and intends clandestine victory.
Her approach is happy, hand
in pocket, fondling a trigger,
irresponsive
to wind-chill on her skin,
to begging, to my tired
upturned face beseeching.
No, she comes.
Let her fire the first cleanly
so all the others
may neatly follow
and make only one hole in my head
rather than the cackling sieve
she made of my heart.
She does it
as she pleases. Watching
my sufferance
she explores her feelings.
(David McLintock)