Skin Mags

From technicoloresque to dinge, torn creases, and their bodies out of fashion, girls vix from the racks of the vintage bookstore under headlines of Knight, Nugget, and some, misaligned—orbs of blue for eyes hover just above and to the right—

and in the limp bill with the menstrual efflorescence of rusted staples or in a geography of mildew, the girls remain unchanged by the nivation of desire: erosion, meltwater, the giving up and letting in, the gone

and irrelevant, the magazines kept in floorboard, attic, basement, or a strongbox. Not even in the act but the suggestion of it, the whole arc of action lost, the girls almost there— almost but not quite and what

they’ve done but never known, all a version of what one desires in who’s desired, mate or otherwise potential energy: what comes next, what came before, the half second of teetering preceeding stability or the fall

with and from them, however changed from the realms of light, the gloss, clothed in brightness—all now old enough to be my grandmother if I imagine the girls as women, as persons, if I try not to think where their likeness has been,

which ones dead and what it means for anyone, including me, to desire an image of the body of the ephemeral, memory or tangible, and how we snare our ghosts for historical value, nail them to our heels until they fan and waver like shadows behind us as we

haunt our own lives with flashlights, compulsions, and spit, or under the fluorescents turning the page, envying the eternal rapture, the pleasure / pain constellation of immortality and unrelease, as it was with you when we laid

our words open for action, and now as I count the bills and smile meekly at the cashier, I can think only of after— a towel around her shivering body, how alone a girl dressed before stepping into the afternoon light.