Ali Wood

Fable

Back at the lake that used to be an ocean,
a young woman wears a red thong bikini,
and from what I’m told by the hands 

of the boy gripping her, she wears it well.
From what I’m told by my girl-eyes too, skirting
where dimpled skin meets the graze of blue-yellow water.

Walking in, it’s hard to feel the cling of pollen
against thigh and not imagine the self
as a repurposed plant, a weed waiting

to be fertilized;
to butterfly my legs apart, let in all that gold;
to look again and find the water hemorrhaging red beads

of dead ladybugs, dozens of them, their own legs
curled compact to their chests,
as though they could hug
life back into themselves.
All these gone bodies

among             here-now bodies, bodies irrevocable
sandalwood smoke,
sex ballooning the air a deep fable, a damp want.

Further away the woman glitters red,
sunburn-red, swim-suit red,                naked red
and I want to follow the gloss, to take her

away from that boy, her hair in my hands
as I pluck each shining beetle out.

Place one on my tongue and call it a forever
piercing of lady, of lady against lady, a lady train

  of lady legs curling into each other—
curling each other golden—

until desire reduces the day to a salt rim

in a freshwater lake,
not unlike a dam, or a lesson, or other things
that are bound to break.

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Ali Wood received her MFA poetry degree at North Carolina State University. Her poems have appeared in Passengers Journal, Gulf Stream Magazine, Bear Review and others. Ali currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.