May

By Karen Volkman b. 1967 Karen Volkman

In May’s gaud gown and ruby reckoning

the old saw wind repeats a colder thing.

Says, you are the bluest body I ever seen.

Says, dance that skeletal startle the way I might.

Radius, ulna, a catalogue of flex.

What do you think you’re grabbing

with those gray hands? What do you think

you’re hunting, cat-mouth creeling

in the mouseless dawn? Pink as meat

in the butcher’s tender grip, white as

the opal of a thigh you smut the lie on.

In May’s red ruse and smattered ravishings

you one, you two, you three your cruder schemes,

you blanch black lurk and blood the pallid bone

and hum scald need where the body says I am

and the rose sighs Touch me, I am dying

in the pleatpetal purring of mouthweathered May.

Source: Spar (University of Iowa Press, 2002)

Biography

Born in Miami, poet Karen Volkman earned a BA at New College and an MA at Syracuse University and completed a year of doctoral studies at the University of Houston. Her poetry collections include Crash’s Law (1996), selected for the National Poetry Series by Heather McHugh; Spar (2002), which won the James Laughlin Award and the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Nomina (2008). Her poetry has been featured in the anthologies The New . . .

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