Steffi Drewes

Two Poems


Proper Fittings

Every other obtainable lady knocks
three times before she performs

polite dismemberment of you
or your words, in ritual fashion

swears no commonplace cure
for rubber knees or rusted

excuses.  Regarding other misses
who lay chase to any volume

of absurd digressions instead of
noting which edition’s ultra

diction leaves best impression,
some suggest all the lanky

ones lay down, creating too
broad a scaffolding, for even

gravity’s best-dressed days
require strict combing.  Crafting

inheritance, ladies, like no other
window or paint brush can.  Speak

fact over fiction and never swollen-
tongued, as if each word addressed

gold crown or goddess, evading
said failures of um, ugh, ahem,

exuding satin-lined posture
come flood, gasp or coffin.



Whether to Yelp: Window Sonnet #3

Facing south, it never ceases to amaze me:
bike bracing patio shadow, it’s tilted, buddy.
Who spied who scoured lost lenses now gluey pennies pitched—
imagine falling deeper, into an echoing well, ill-lit.
Birds flapping swoop hedge-wide in circles.
Nosh on this mash gone sour, sweet tea puddles,
rosemary creeps silent swollen veins along the side of the house,
socks on a dirty brick stoop, sifting a mate for this flour-white one,
sweat clinging jars. See: sloshed blessing.
Winter wants me blind, poor bastard.
Less light near fiction—or so the story goes, bees born from pods.
a blossom gropes for a new glow dodging.
Sense the blood-hound, dear Edgar, rooting his snout.
Said any anvil looming outside the radar looks brutish, if you ask me.



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