Delphine Is on Silent Retreat

Delphine is snug in the corruptible quiet, her heart all lurgy.

She is vigorous with postures and slackening her jaw.

The vogue memory is how when she was ten she stuck

her tongue out really far and her friend said,

“That makes you a lemon.” Retrospectively,

what she wanted was a perm

and a dad that gave money for the arcade.

Delphine lies down in the corner and gets up and lies down again, etc.

This is so she knows she’s lain down on every bit of the floor.

There’s no one to see, so makeup is taken very seriously.

If she French kisses the window her hair starts to curl — 

it is all very boudoir. Delphine expected to be bored.

What she needs to say aloud is smooch.

Delphine’s heart is more woolen than sure.

She nipped off the fur buds

from the pussy willow and strung them

into a necklace — a means of clustering wants.

In the faraway land, her old milk glass

holds other people’s toothbrushes and curdling water.

Precision here is superfluous as cut flowers. On the seafront

the shrubs are meek in the blossoming wind.

Delphine has worked on her complexion.

Bestowed with peaches, she’s personal limelight.

At night her cruelties sneak up the ladder of her throat.

Its delphinedelphinedelphine on steamed-up mirrors,

always in joined-up finger-writing.

Singing is only permitted in the dark. Delphine is judging

her own obedience. Look at me being strict! But she has

to remind herself of the rules, hourly. Deceit is its own discipline.

Today the shrubs are insolent, waiting for adults to prepare a new game.

Delphine considers ceremonial magic, but how to practice

without a little magic escaping?

Wish yourself into a lovely place, she thinks. Loveliness

would include shrubs without such expressions!

Wisdom may well have been squandered on seafronts

and lipstick. So many years afraid of waste is its own

waste is her self-comfort when the light folds.