Indelicate: hanged, then sometimes burned
its scent that breeds children, afterwards
like flesh, climbs and roots at the far regions
cloying even in photographs, smiling
pinked tuberous one smudged boy in cap
infiltrating— it was a spectacle
historical, southern this fear that had its glee
even in the hangings, mutilationsunclassed vatic sexual: one per week, more
covering the share-cropper’s for a century
shack: dense scroll turned in on itself
upon which God leaves shame: twisting among
evidence of aching the leaves
Do you see the wings dissolve that scent
among us
Pink Jasmine
AMY PENCE authored the poetry collections Armor, Amour (Ninebark Press, 2012) and The Decadent Lovely (Main Street Rag, 2010). Her hybrid work on Emily Dickinson [It] Incandescent was a finalist for Tupelo Press’s Snowbound Chapbook Award and the Colorado Prize for Poetry, and her essay on Dickinson and her biographers appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle. She lives with her husband and her daughter in Carrollton, Georgia.