Bell

her teeth are bricks;
mortar sweet Spanish,
        she speaks in velvets and reds
and puts the phalanges on the fire hydrant.

a baby, round and ringing like a bell,
tucked between denim and lanugo
and silver through ears.

twelve years old:
she's weighty,
like a cigar man blew smoke into her stomach
like a cloud was mistakenly inhaled
from a laugh,
from a saturday morning floor-sleep-wait
for gunslinging,
         that un-comes,
replaced with staccato of cartoons.

on the train,
her paddle feet tucked under the rain mat,
she tells her baby "Georgia tastes
like peppermint-cool summers"
and her braid sways like a Cherokee Rose
and the boy balls his fists like Tiger Flowers-
         they will unfurl as butterfly wings,
         stained-glass and webbed,
         when she sips gold tea
         and bends up her legs
         and starts to breathe.  

he cries; he speaks in a drawl.
She learns to fake it.