Promiscuous Penciling

Promiscuous Penciling

We are refugees wandering the no man’s land
between the smoking ruins of an adolescence
whose home we can never return to
and the offer of asylum in an adulthood
whose customs are so strange.
The vocabulary of bones is buried in us
from the rote lessons of our schoolmistress
with her chalky fingers.
Who populated our bestiary of grammar
With prepositions to proposition
The prospective Cleopatra of cubicles
With ink-stained promises
Of promiscuous penciling