by Kathleen Radigan
Featured Art: Abstraction on Concrete by Howard Dearstyne
In the garden I cup a hand
before you, strain my wrist,
willing you to perch.
A nearby woman grips her cane.
“Young lady. If you touch them,
they die.”
Born again from a gauze
coffin, you’re blackwinged,
fragile on a wax leaf.
In the heat
of a weeklong life
you batter between
fluorescents and dahlias, legs
thinner than wires,
and float over tendriled
chrysanthemum heads.
Tease everything—hands,
canes, stem, with a feathery
suggestion. I want
to chew you.
Taste the metallic
powder of each wing.
If only to become
so beautiful
that being
touched just once
would kill me.
Originally appeared in NOR 25
Kathleen Radigan holds a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from Boston University. Her work has been published by PANK Blog, Carve, the Antigonish Review, the Belladonna* Series, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. She was a fall 2019 Brooklyn Poets fellow, and her first chapbook The Frustrated Ones is forthcoming this spring from dancing girl press. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing to gifted public high school students.