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after Joseph Cornell's Tilly Losch
Here we have a box of girl, strung above
white-capped mountains in blue-
backed box. No doubt she will
wait here for something, for her skirt,
a miracle of motley pennants, to blow up,
for her sky-
colored dress to burn like a little sun, sky
bound over the cardboard landscape. Above
her nothing but strings-- a dream holding her up.
Suspended in blue
sleep, she will skirt
the peaks of awake, she will
dream herself into three dimensions, she will
undo all upon waking: the perfect sky
flakes, the glass pane mottles her skirt
to cloud, blotting the box above
and below, all sides a new blue,
her little Eden done up
in decoupage, strung up
to wait for waking, for pang of will,
for the gumption of a blue
stocking to behoove her out of sky.
Something above her
invisible
as legs under skirt,
invented her skirt
and strung her up,
made her a perfect hover craft above
the jagged landscape of will,
rationality of sky.
This something saw blue
and said it was good, good to dream in blue
reflected back endlessly on the dreamer. It skirts
itself, it melds with sky,
this side up.
Easy dreamer, she will
notice the red ball strung between her hands above
the shadow of skirt, and take the fine
fruit up
into the blue folds and polish it. She will
end
it-- bite into the sky above.
