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SNAKESKIN
From earliest days she’s told
watch every step, beware
the snake that tempts
from the sweetest tree.
How snakes can slither in
where you least expect.
Years later, she still wears
a diamond-
back around her neck
as he slips her blouse
from her shoulders
to bare the ripe apples.
What defines the grace
of snake?
The way it strikes, or
how it curves
safe into itself
away?
She runs a finger
over her forearm, cheek
and thigh.
Every cell he touched
is dead. Snakeskin. She
grows herself anew.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer
search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and also
helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field
projects. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The New
York Quarterly, Poetry International, and elsewhere, and she's
included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush
to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The
Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006) was awarded
the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize; her latest is Among
Neighbors (Rattlesnake Press, 2007). |
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