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Plastic Sonnet 38

BY CAROLINE CREW

 

How slowly the world turns on my lips—
for now, state your scarlet ideal.

Pride told me it was my sister:
the purple conditions of her mouth
imperil to the biggest red,
my autobiography in the key
of cherry bomb.

In fact you are one moment
of love me, my country & a hundred
fathoms of neutral wonder—

the body must start somewhere.
No history agrees on how fingers
should be the most beautiful,

still I fingerspell you constantly:
crescent moon, bull horn, gun.

Caroline Crew is the author of several chapbooks, including the forthcoming Caroline, Who Will You Pray to Now That You Are Dead (Coconut Books, 2015). Her work appears or is forthcoming in ConjunctionsSalt Hill Journal, and Black Warrior Review, among others. Her full-length collection, Plastic Sonnets, will be out from Big Lucks in 2015. She’s online here: caroline-crew.com.