Poetry : Kristofer Collins
Undressing, a Girl Becomes the City
I could call her skin so many things – winter smoke
Rising across a skein of bridges; the rolling
Red light of cop cars down an alley of pursuit;
The chill reticence of flight prickling the raised
Gate of a parking garage; the creamy scrim
Of river dross mucked by a colony of gulls a-quiver
With the expectation of feeding; a horror of children
Crawling upon the melted fields; a silence of confusing,
Shushed gestures ciphering the hieroglyphs of
Our disappeared economy…
My every frail attempt at calling into your eye
The inexpressible, the confounding straits of love
That plague my tongue…
Your small body there
Standing naked with the window
Behind you & the city straightening
It’s spine as the dusky shadows quell…
It’s only that in the moment
I could not distinguish
One face from the other
Kristofer Collins is the managing editor of The New Yinzer, an occasional book reviewer for The Post Gazette, and owner of Desolation Row CDs. He is the author of the poetry collections King Everything, The Book of Names, and most recently, The Liturgy of Streets.
