like twin gauntlets set on the margin: enter the female
assassin. The screwball debutante. Noir & glitz
mixed in one bad throwback to an age when dahlias
bowled anyone who breathed them. My poems arrive
wearing satin or suede to haunt you when they leave
no trace. I’ve watched a man pull off his gloves
with his teeth. The trick to undoing the wolf
behind the saint is to make a slo-mo invitation
of it. Because there’s never a plot unless one of us
goes missing, that’s me at the aerodrome
& you boarding a custard plane. Now fly
a desultory wind before you vanish. That’s
the tension we need. I love an overblown image:
a drawer full of hands wave in a solemn motorcade.
My gloves pantomime moods so thick
you could ladle gravy. About my first book
a critic wrote I’m a little bored with the aesthetic.
If that isn’t damning, what is? My poems wear black
to turn the dials & bag the ice. In the director’s cut
I’m driving the hairpin curve when the camera
rolls back to show you, looking louche, but alive.
You were always in on it. A poem is a diamond heist.
Tell the critic no one watches a woman enter a room
to look at her hands just like no one’s reading
this poem to picture my life. But a black glove.
Peeled down the avenue of my arm, what wouldn’t you do?
© Karen Rigby
First published in The Spectacle.