Some Girls - Alison Luterman

[Larry Robinson]

Some Girls 

Some girls can’t help it; they are lit sparklers,
hot-blooded, half naked in the depths of winter,
tagging moving trains with the bright insignia of their
    fury.
I’ve seen their inked torsos: falcons, swans, meteor
    showers.
And shadowed their secret rendezvous,
walking and flying all night over paths traced like veins
through the deep body of the forest
where they are trying on their new wings,
rising to power with a ferocious mercy
not seen before in the cities of men.
Having survived slander, abuse, and every kind of exile,
they’re swooping down even now
from treetops where they were roosting,
wearing robes woven of spider webs and pigeon
    feathers.
They have pulled the living child out of the flames
and are prepared to take charge through the coming
    apocalypse.
I have learned that some girls are boys; some are birds,
some are oases ringed with stalking lions. See,
I cannot even name them,
although one of them is looking out through my eyes
    right now,
one of them
is writing all this down with light-struck fingers.

	- Alison Luterman