Enclosure, steam-heated; a trial casket.

You are here; your name on a postal box;

entrance into another place like vapor.

No one knows you. No one speaks to you.

All of their cocks stare down their pant legsat the ground.

Their cunts are blind.

Theybarely let you through the check-out line.

Have a nice day. Plastic or paper?

Are you origami?

A paper folded swan,like the ones you made when you were ten?

When you saw the constellations,

lying on your back in the wet grass,

the soapy pear blossoms driftingand wasting,

and those starts, the burned out oneswhose light was still coming in waves;

your body was too slight.

How could it hold such mass?

Still on your lips the taste of something.

All night you waited for morning, all morningfor afternoon,

all afternoon for night;and still the longing sings.

Oh, paper bird with folded wings.                                         

-Ruth Stone (1915-2011)