Today's poem is by Jamaica Baldwin

All That Splendor
        after Vievee Francis

I watch them work, spiders
with their trapeze swings,
spinning worlds so easily broken
by the avalanche of my body.

This breaking of webs
isn't always an accident. No.
Sometimes I just want to ruin something perfect,
to see how quickly it bounces back.
Tell me
you haven't wanted to tarnish, to dull
all that ferocious effort.

Tell me you haven't been stretched and left
delicate, barely there,
till every part of you is an entrance.

This is what happens when we leave
all our splendor out in the open,
slivers of translucent shimmers
just begging to be pulled apart.

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Copyright © 2023 Jamaica Baldwin All rights reserved
from Bone Language
YesYes Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission