fetish

I was allowed my little ways
when my toes were painted, and
out in the yard they picked up
moss bricks daddy-long-legs
I picked up
the speckled sun and sniffed it.

Turned your crime into my charm.
No one ever told me
what is the cure for all this--
what the cure might be for smoke
born in the lungs
and screwed on black glass eyeballs,
eyes made that never could see the sun.

Yet not a spindle in view,
not mother not demon not nymph
So. Screw off these eyeballs, put in
the new citrus leaves,
waxed monstrous impenetrable organs
they are. When they catch red and fall
at some bilious frost, at least then
I'll remember the painted
foot of the sun.