Glare

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She came from long unquestioned 
places where metallic glare and smell 
of asphalt baste the skin to darkness 
and white the opened eye.
 
She hones sharp angles of the mind,
held above a neck stretched forward.
Bare arms and thighs are marked with
tracings of reality and other alleys.
 
She wears an amulet carved from pieces
of past times she could not throw away,
held tight against the nostril's curve,
a diversion into scent and instinct.
 
She wraps blue veins pulsing in the wrist
where straightness has been broken.  At her
feet grow unknown flowers with clanging
names and no power to transform. 


Copyright © Anne Fraser

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