Kathleen Winter
 

against detachment

The berries, rolling

toward us, rolling

away from us.

We're realists:

guilt is practical

but not original.


Guilt survives pleasure,

concise respirer.

Even lingerie tires,

frayed cloth bares wires.

Now, my amanuensis

winces.


Yet how else live

but with this involuntary drive

to open and cry out, flowers

following the sun, ours

this craving to sing,

to photograph everything.
 

Petit Magritte

A miniature is a gift.

A minotaur is a bull?

A wooden horse is no gift,

and a bum steer is no bull.

My lover, a matador,

a matador my lover.

Give me over, racedriver.

A jacket with handwarmer

pockets, a rabbit collar.

Here in the City of Light,

nobody has a dollar.

perfect loser

I want always
to lose right,
to toss everything

necessary, nothing
overly, to know
cold what

other's worth
retaining:
me the mollusk,

lapping sap,
making it, slow,
blind, into myself.

post hoc ergo propter hoc

This is the splendor

of calm love, the room

white on the inside

and on the outside.

Remembering reality

is subject to attenuation.

Fed by the moon, dune

grass grows barnacles

of burr. Even innocence

has consequences.

So what if you talk

on the telephone

now and touch yourself

instead of taking

his fingers into

your mouth, almost

swallowing them.

At least you can sleep

with yourself afterward.