Glamour [The look I am hunting]
The look I am hunting: the one
that through color and cut glares
the starer into a skull or a skein
of lightning, a switch
stalled at dawn, or the gloaming
along an equator. What fascinates
I shine like flame-blackened foil,
a rhinestone snoring at lake bottom,
a wreck's brass-bound astrolabe,
bright as hard tender, newly minted,
mewling and naked under
oil-slick pleather sieving light,
prism-like, my limbs sing their siren
song, pull ribbons of pure note over
the pack's snarl and bark, teeth pop,
dangling chain of saliva snaps—
deep under, I stay
seamless as a safe, rusted-sealed letter
box, corroded pill case, my insides
scoured to looking glass
by a tangle of wind trapped,
a cyclone circling the space
the size a doll's eye makes,
panting my small breath.
Copyright Credit: Maggie Queeney, "Glamour [The look I am hunting]" from In Kind. Copyright © 2023 by Maggie Queeney. Reprinted by permission of University of Iowa Press.
Source: In Kind (University of Iowa Press, 2023)