Of                   Debora Greger

Bellflower spilling a candlesnuffer's dark hints-
in such a pooled blue, moon sidles to branch

through a high pane shoved sharply
against sharpened sky.  So what we would  close in on

recedes: a glossy centerfold dissolves
into modesty-black, cyan sequestered

under magenta's blush, and yellow 
unmixing the muddied glow of shaven thigh.

Or, closer, fiddleheads of fern bow
and scrape an air anguished with the O

of lips forced into a blood-flecked kiss,
the sprung trap that hugs a fox's dragging foot.

Short leash, this is how of works,
tricked out as if in wife and the howl in wolf.

Circlet of clawed furs collaring a jacket
of skin, glass-eyed, each pelt clamps a tail

hard in the false teeth of possession.
Make me, the girl in her mother's coat taunts

from a doorway, You can't make me.
There are limits to what we'll do to each other

on the strength of love or any other weakness;
there must  be.