The girls at camp
Taught me to shave my arms
Parking lot, yellowed dying weeds
Rough concrete, drag your hand across
Long for the softness that would never
Make battlegrounds of your palms
Nico’s arm held out to us for judgment
Injunction: feel the softness
I’m worried, she tells us,
It grows back so fast
I won’t tell her but I can see the follicles
Something underneath her skin
Is planning an invasion
Annie would say:
Lie in the grass
Until your converse are buried alive
Like dandelion seeds
Sprout a canvas tree,
Rivets, shoelaces, little drawings in the bark
Hearts stars monsters in ballpoint pen
Lie in the grass
Until the sun melts your honey eyes
Until the ants crawl out of
The pores of your arms
Where you shaved them
Annie is beautiful
From Mariposa, California
Her arms have never met metal
I wonder how they would feel
Downy, baby chicks,
A ten-year-old girl on the monkey bars
Purple t-shirt, unbrushed hair,
Swinging through soft July,
Legs kicking a cornflower blue sky
The hit of those barren arms would hurt
Nico wouldn’t listen to Annie
I’m worried, she tells us,
It grows back so fast.