The Howling Plains

She felt something once, tall frame
arranged into parts, bright skin
illumed the dark like heralded light
traveled through what it felt to be
hungered. Here was the heavy coat
of August rotting away on cedar floor,
damp with longing where her gaze
nursed the howling blur of miles.
Then she was legs turned and cigar
ash touched on the wrists, neat plaits
licked the blisters of plains into
the soft of her hands, into fingertips
hot and rotten. So she gave laughs to
the river until the whole dense of
her branded with brown flesh turned
yellow, dripping summer's pixie hair
around her long, thin bones. Until
what she feared was already breaths
in her chest, a closet being where
scales falling from spine and city ruins.