portrait of a Missouri woman

by Nixi Schroeder

she is the cloud bank;

she whispers imposition

from the curve of her neck, the

sigh of her shoulder, the

sycamore-blues of her grass-eaten knee. she is

amber, clotted against autumn’s pavement, a

mite, crawling smallishly in her plastic beads and worn-through jeans

and she matches her dresses to her bruises

for she (will not) tolerate ugly things.

and she is a horizon;

she is smudged rain;

she is rusted bridges, her legs

the baked silt brown of river clay

every inch as powdered, as brittle,

and

slowly (secretly)

she is cracking from dryness

but

each night, her sovereign lips

whisper skyward,

(secretly)

poaching soft kisses

from a whisky-cask

moon.

and she dreams

she is breathing

* * * * *

Nixi Schroeder is a teaching assistant and MA student of English at Truman State University. Her work has been featured by The Fem, Red Dashboard Press, Eyedrum Periodically, Sweet 16's not AR 15's, The Monitor, Everyday Poets, and Windfall Magazine, among other publications. She is also a former poetry reader for the Chariton Review.