TINSEL DEMON
BY ELIZABETH METZGER
Before I had to live in an enormous body in a miniscule world,
I took my round existence with no ledges to perch on.
Want was a matter of perpetual suspension, a liquid cot
That gave me dreams of having holes.
Rats were beloved in their brutal habits. I had no trouble
Clearing out the attic of a nerve. Nothing was gentle
Or faintly gracious. The sound of pocketknives carving
The cochlea. The wet reminder of an eye.
Then you came, littering space raising your solar finger
To flush each fold with a pink and orange fever.
When you were cold and out of color you could not stop
Hanging the world with yourself in cheap restless strips.
j
j
grown daughter
BY ELIZABETH METZGER
We sit side by side at a round table
impossibly smoking from one orifice in the wall.
As you can see we are leaning forward
on our chair legs, pressing our faces to the faucet
we practiced kissing when we were young.
Then we are practicing empathy for our future
infants—for me I am her past mouth—
sucking the mammal so strenuously love gives
rise to a sense of hollowness, of outpouring,
of energetic stealth. The pillow has no give,
like silence. We did not practice on that. But
I still rock my body between two pillows placed
the long way to prove I am easy to bear
and too protected to console—
It gets late and mother doesn’t remember how
to address me, as doctor or Mrs. or clock.
I cannot tell mother from the numbers on her face.
I cannot tell time without her winding around,
and misreading needs me brave and naked
and dead. When mother asks what time it is now,
I ask her to turn down her death, my dial,
and tuck me in.
