Judith Skillman
Burlesque
January—pale month in a reliquary.
Planted in soil, iced over, snowed upon.
A moon, lamp-like, hung
above the garden behind cloud cover.
The titmouse, the sparrows,
moving like roaches over these grounds.
An almost monstrous lack, informed
by cold, hunger, and neglect.
Will the willow pirouette tonight,
its branches scraped clean of tear-shaped leaves?
The deer made out of twine falls
on its side in the realtor’s yard.
No ragtime but alcohol. At the party
guests sit like actors in a sitcom on a flat screen TV.
A woman with a drink in her hand
like Gypsy Ray Lee.
Cold concocts its smallish, shortest song.
No sun in the body
when moss presides in the garden.
I dreamt of RSVPs,
nodes on the lilac, tumor
in the bark of the apple,
an absence of buds, which is to say,
when did the naked emperor become an affair?
Judith Skillman is is the author of Premise of Light (Tebot Bach, 2018). Her poems have appeared in Shenandoah, Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Zyzzyva, and other journals. She is the recipient of grants from Artist Trust and the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.