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lapping up the greedy length of the arm, shoes
of those hanging gardens of skirt
and your tongue has gone cool and dry with desire,
of Sinai and Everest. Some mornings I linger
where I'm reminded of my Russian stacking dolls:
With us, it is easy: a tug on the tie, the ubiquitous zipper.
But with a woman, you can never be certain how deep
the layers go. First, perhaps, a jacket of mink, gloves
like airy Eiffels for the feet. Then the untethering
of beads and bracelets, the slow dismantling
crashing around foundations of lace and bone.
And right when the patience has died in your fingers,
you are suddenly faced with that blinding symmetry
both spherical and isosceles, the twin raptures
in Pat's closet, among all the incompatible species
of fox and alligator, ostrich and lamb,
how the smallest is absolutely empty
but for silence, longing, a residue of perfume.Karen Kovacik
"Kafka said that a book 'should be an axe that breaks
open the frozen sea inside us.' Yes, that lifesaving
function of poetry is one of the reasons we turn to it
in the first place, but there are other reasons, too,
including the pleasure of creation, the sparks that
words give off when placed in a certain sequence. At
the beginning of a poem, everything is possible."
Karen Kovacik, IUPUI
Comments: homepgs@indiana.edu
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