T To Mima’s Vase Tom Daley
To Mima’s Vase Your glaze was shaved by lava. Hieroglyphs in cider dregs cankered your lip. Across your curves, toss their toast-black wings. Their color pools like ladled mole light. You burned that she might sing. With heat leached from brush fires, she hackled your neck. She drizzled your back
in ochre
clawed from the caves of Lascaux. Somewhere in the of your earth, like kiln fire.
scorched apple
her hands still flame Peel away your
‚Black Wings‛ by E. A. Hanninen, 2010
crows, slow as clay,
singed papyrus husk and twine us again in the wind and wheeling of her grace.
To Mima’s Vase first appeared in The Studio Potter (2005).
Tom Daley serves on the faculty of the Online School of Poetry and teaches poetry and memoir writing in the greater Boston area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harvard Review, Fence, Barrow Street, Diagram, Rio Grande Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of a play, Every Broom and Bridget — Emily Dickinson and Her Servants, which he has adapted into a one-man show. Contact Tom (tom.daley2@verizon.net) Online School of Poetry (http://onlineschoolofpoetry.org/)