The truth? I couldn’t wait to split. Picture
a birdcage strung up on baroque unwritten codes
— like living in a police state, I told the serpent
when we ducked out for a cigarette
one night near the end, just before it all
blew to smithereens, just before my lewdness
cracked the perfect and perfectly boring landscape
(a top-ten “Places to See Before You Die”)
mapped in majolica on the tiled floor of Anacapri:
a paradise of rivers and islands, flowers and fish,
and all His weird experiments (zebras, giraffes).
I was incidental there, a thorn in someone’s side.
In the far corner — you have to lean in close
— the exiled Crown of Creation and I, his rib-bone,
trying to cover ourselves with ferns and fronds.
Observe how my long hair hides my smile.
Wouldn’t smoking be divine after sex?
the serpent asked me once. What’s that? I said.
Jo Ann Baldinger lives in Portland, Oregon, where she writes poems, practices yoga, and tries to be patient. Her poems have appeared in Cirque, Verdad, Blue Mesa, Tsunami, and Onthebus.
