Kith
by Anne Duncan
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Touch is easy these Eves harbor no fig leaf,
draped in Mary’s red silk heavy no one is virgin we aren’t sure what it is to be pure anymore / ever I spy my eye sliding sap down her limbs twisted wonder if it taints me desert dirt caught in my honey don’t we want the earth inside us mouthy drum beats mallet of the moon tithe don’t we want to leave rusty trails down the bathtub drain? Their touch is always: tell me it can’t be butchered by the clever flick of a critic’s eye, or eyebrow-plucked by a plaque that tells of her marriage but never this touch, this cage, the course of this orbit gaze.
Anne Duncan lives on the edge of Lake Washington in Seattle. She works as a composition instructor and predoctoral student studying modern and contemporary poetry at the University of Washington. She holds a BA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. Her poetry can be found in The Ekphrastic Review and Ekphrasis Magazine (forthcoming), and her literary reviews in 32 Poems and Bone Bouquet.