Janet Lynn Davis

Ode to the fry

           I. 
 
Long and slender 
like fingers 
of a pianist, 
other times 
broad, almost Rubenesque, 
your forms and moods 
would sometimes change. 
Your skin glistened 
a golden tan, 
and inside 
you were crushed gardenias— 
soft and white. 
You were best 
when sizzling; 
I savored your taste 
against my lips! 
All this: 
my portrait of you. 
 
           II.
 
Yet I chose 
to wash my guilty 
hands of you, 
your touch greasy, 
your scent  
of spent fat oft 
now repulsive. 
O former fry  
of my eye, 
you were a houseguest 
who would stay  
too long— 
the way  
you would cling 
to the gullible 
roof of my mouth 
with your blatant essence, 
my former excess. 

          III. 
 
I promise to remember 
you with youthful lust, 
you, wonder  
of my innocence!  
You, whom I have left 
for another— 
tossed in olive oil 
and roasted—  
were far too deadly 
for my heart.

From a conservation on a slow afternoon

When we’re eighty or older,
I’ll dye my hair orange.
I’ll look like an albino raisin,
you say, with a large caterpillar
draped over the top of my head
You’ll have no more charm
than you do right now.
You’ll wear a coonskin toupee
that I’ll help you glue down
in the windy season.
We’ll make sure our minds 
are always dusted and oiled,
mine by reading poetry of the young,
yours with daily crosswords
and doses of red wine, you claim.
But we won’t let the other folks 
know just how sharp we are. 
Then we’ll play dominoes, 
gin, and poker for quarters,
and we’ll win—every time.

Transcendent in Spring

Today I will lay this body of bones aside—
sweep it onto the doorstep. 
And this shroud of skin encasing it, 
scarred and spotted and shabby with age,
I will hang to air out emptily
beneath the tepid April sky.
 
The blood that defines me, rich and ruby,
I will store inside jars until I return.
Human thoughts I will surrender to flame;
and the bodily pain that confines me,
strikes as darts and ghostly groans,
I will leave like litter on the ground.
 
Today I will be no more than the aura
around me, contracting, expanding,
soaring above all earthly sensation.
Tomorrow I will mingle again
with moths on this shadowy sphere.
But today I will regrow my eyes—
                        clear, lazuline.