Two Poems

Conversation with the Sculptor

It's the way my father made a body
out of knots. The sculpted metal heads
with eyes sewn open and ears wired back
grew numerous in my childhood.

My thinking used up by the greatest thinkers:
heads perched on pedestals, brain-stems
growing dusty denominations, fascinating lint.

Infinite, far beyond me, their metal mouths
forming a logic my father's pliers clamped
and bent into thought.

The past spirals out of me. Static.
I'm no longer pouring out apologies.
I mumble my truce with bones, tendons,
words quick to leave my tongue.

Does he know the doves I keep
between my shoulder blades, almost breaking
gray wings when they burst from my mouth,
hell to pay as they catapult into the sky?

Braid

To tie the shoe lace my father
shows me tuck under, pull through
and the bow my limbs let go in.

Go on, kiss, nuzzle the round curve
of my thigh. I won't startle like a deer in the road.
What good am I held under such waves—a girl again
—skinny, skulking girl with scuffed knees.

I paddle my boat out of thinking, make the bargain
to climb onto the island of your hips.

Go ahead, pull me up by my arms
and turn me over. My eyes snap open like a doll's.
Tuck me in, a sweet Sally in red velvet
with lace trim.

My father wraps the bow into loops.
I tug and tug, a country undoing
in me. Tell me how my fingers
can work this one loose.

Amber Flora Thomas is the recipient of several major poetry awards, including the Richard Peterson Prize and Ann Stanford Prize. Her first collection of poems, Eye of Water, won the 2004 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2005. Her poetry has appeared in Calyx, Gulf Coast, Bellingham Review, and Southern Poetry Review, among other publications. Currently, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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