Girl on a Scale
- Girl on a Scale
Winter drew in.I watched food fall awayfrom her mouth
no, it was a dreammy daughter stood on one footlike a seabird by my bed
I sat up insistingbut birds eat constantly.Outside the frost
a sapling, stalk, a reed encased.What use, to refuse?Not a gain again.
Ungrown so thin she slippedbetween the barsand hunkered
inside her cage.Then the fur came upon her.Then the one
with icicle teethwho eavesdropped on our silencemasticating air. [End Page 96]
I awoke—it was she in the bed,toward herthe IV dripped drippedlike an early thaw. [End Page 97]
Jeanne Marie Beaumont is the author of Curious Conduct (BOA Editions, 2004), Placebo Effects (Norton, 1997), and the forthcoming Burning of the Three Fires (BOA Editions, 2010). She teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine and at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, and directs the seminar at the Frost Place in New Hampshire. She lives in Manhattan.
