My friend Anne suggested some things about my last poem that made a lot of sense. So, I've been messing around with "For the Commercial Trade", and thought I'd post the newest version, which may not be the last, but which, I think, is tighter and more focused than the original. You should know, it's not the exact coherence that Anne suggested might be possible. Instead, it's what happened next.
Let me know.
Pictures For The Trade
One has an oddly shaped cabbage,
like a pinecone from a spruce, long and green,
or a slender version of the Cone of Welcome
painted on pottery for the commercial trade in Italy.
One has a headache
like a spruce, dark and green,
or a harder version of the fist that found her lip
and split it the August she was twenty-three.
One has buttons on a shirt, white and neat,
like a line of little stones a child might string along a storm-washed beach,
or the pretty needle teeth a tabby kitten shows you
when she yawns widely before curling up to sleep.
In the picture of my mother at seventeen, her eyes are smiling. She is slender. Green,
like she was just as safe and happy as she seemed,
or like the time between when she’d forgotten
the last loved one who’d left her and didn't know yet the one about to leave.
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