Borderline

The Amazing Human Magpie
 
Heaven is eating a handful of bolts. In the third grade
I swallowed a staple by chance. It scratched but I loved
the fine points opening inside my throat. One boy saw
it happen; a single day passed and every pupil knew.
 
I collected for months, a jackdaw’s mound of shining
treasure like a slow-growing tumor beneath my bed.
Finally I could not resist, slid a pair of earrings across
my tongue. Every day after I tried something new.

By twenty-three: a bicycle, spoke by silver spoke.
The brilliant static and color of a television tumble
together inside me. A fan belt, clouds of steel wool,
a long box of nails, my dead mother’s wedding ring.

It’s an isolating appetite: my mouth waters, even just
to say the words—Zinc. Copper. Steel. Tin. Of course
I eat alone; who else knows what it means to love
the slick-tinted taste of keys, their rough bite and kiss?

But I am never lonely on stage: the spotlight burns
a bright ring; my shadow falls darkly through its perfect
circle. On the table lies an airplane in pieces; it calls
my name. The crowd holds its breath. I open my terrible jaws.

Pandora in the City

From her is the race of women and female kind:
of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who
live amongst mortal men to their great trouble
Hesiod

We are poisonous inside and out,
our impeccable body balanced
with impossible precision on ice-

purple Manolo Blahniks, fingernails
manicured to match. We cannot be
touched, yet everyone wants to touch

us. We are always out of reach, the reason
you wake each morning with an erection,
your stiff legs reaching for the floor. We are

the reason you are unkind to Julie in Homeroom
and Michelle in Geometry class, for no simple
young city girl can compete with us: each city

morning we raise our arm for the taxi, straps
of our Valentino dress sliding just slightly into
our collar bone. We see you lick your lips,

know you are tracing the outline of our hips
inside the fluttering slip of fabric. We know
later you will imagine us when you let Kate

from Spanish give you a handjob in the storage
room at Starbucks, doing your best to ignore her
milksour breath against your cheek. You do
not know we can eat you whole, and will.