Madeleine Kruhly

 

Anklets, baby
 

for weight of the body

            heartbone and shoulder blade

                        sees you

 

as you are. suppling

            and being unwilling to supple.

                        hating

 

the word, used only

            for putting a handle on wild

                         beings

 

like sage. laying alone

            you are the shape of one line

                        starred

 

twice. prickling for it

            but quietly, as you were told.

                        furled

 

around to get your head

            right, ankles thick as simple

                        birds.

 
 
 

The devil wears your clothes

 

sometimes it comes down

            to a fake moon around

                        licks of air

 

and there goes the will to moan

            last night I tried to fool

                        my body

 

fought for limpness in the least

            strange of places a

                        room

 

who could blame me it was so

            bright and had been

                        scrubbed

 

down hard my shoulders began

            to seize up like cat’s

                        fur

 

bolt eyes set firmly there are

            lots of ways to be

                        loved

 

and I’m only looking for one

            of them always a

                        devil

 

you know the shadow dressed

            in a black t-shirt says

                        I won’t

~

Madeleine Kruhly is a graduate of the Masters in Poetry programme at the University of East Anglia. Her poems have appeared in Ambit, THRUSH, and The Stockholm Review of Literature, and her criticisms published online for The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Economist. She currently lives in New York.