Lori Lamothe
Girl with a Bee Dress
after Maggie Taylor
Whether the bees are arriving
or departing is open
to debate.
The pink daisy
held between both hands
offers no information.
As for the girl, her dark eyes
are twin lakes
that drown reflection.
The mouth isn’t any different.
It curves in no direction
as her body becomes
a gown of wings
too dangerous to touch.
Maybe the shift away
from innocence
is filled with venom.
On the other hand
what if the future is beauty
that hums electric,
stings us only
when we fall back into sleep?
Fourth of July
The harbor is stars and stripes
and too many ferries
painted to look like fish.
Every last one
is stuffed to the gills with tourists.
They file down the docks
armed with Iphones and sippy cups,
strollers, sunblock, GPS
and conversations
easily overheard.
We’re tourists too, whether or not
we admit it,
the view from deck a skyline
we should have dreamed as kids
but didn’t.
So when the sun flings its light at water
and the surface webs into a thousand mirrors
a feeling we can’t count on
flickers into being.
When it’s all over the sails of the boats
fill with shadows
and the winds inside us—
flagless and firespun and nameless—
billow out across what we tell ourselves
is the obvious world.
The Cloud Sisters
after Maggie Taylor
One in green, one in blue,
they sit side by side on air
or possibly a bench
hidden behind vision.
It isn’t easy, wearing
the weather for so long—
smiling frozen smiles
while clouds float by
in gauzy disarray
and rain scatters
seeds of clarity
between silken folds.
One dreams her body
leafing out into spring,
feels her limbs
unravel in earth
as her head reaches
light’s ceiling—becomes
petal and wind. The other
never sleeps,
only writes and rewrites
the darkest corners
of sky, the endless
churning sea.