Advice: A Book of Poems

Chapter 34: YOUNG WOMAN

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About This Book

A series of short lyric pieces speaks directly to plants, animals, objects, streets and people, offering counsel, observation and ironic tenderness through apostrophic address. Urban and industrial vignettes sit beside pastoral and fable-like poems, with occasional dialogues and parable structures that alternate between sardonic humor and elegiac calm. Recurrent contrasts between motion and stillness highlight scenes of labor, performance and fleeting beauty, while a personal, conversational tone links meditative portraits and sharp urban sketches to broader reflections on perception, loss and small, uncanny moments.

YOUNG WOMAN

So we have a face

Cupped by tender insolences,

Half repenting insolences

Teasing their own angers.

Then, a tense exuberance

Brushes them away

And burns a humbly erect

Queen upon her face.

This happens in the space

Between a frown and indecision.

Her face becomes forlornly wild,

And a beggarly impatience

Hovers into furtive shame.

All the supplely intricate flame

Vanishes, and leaves no mark.

Her eyes are violently dark

With a hopeless waiting;

Her lips are isolated tatters—

All that is left of shattered recreating.

Then, as quickly as she fled,

The humble queen returns.

Staring and unappeased

She eyes her crumpled hands.