Deconstructed Girl by Kristin Garth

published in Don’t Submit

Quiescent upon an altar of glass,

beneath a pyramid skylight, she drafts 

a morass from whatever goes past —

light twinkling from constellations, air craft, swallows, pigeons who play overhead this 

deconstructed girl, her precarious 

bed.  Head fertile with intrigues, each a wish 

for how she might live, flesh Stradivarius 

opened rough until it is a sieve.  Lives 

in these narratives, all memorized,

she whispers when abandonment gives 

permission to at least close her wet eyes.

Holds on to each tale like a place she has been

before this room where no one offers a pen.