there are such small women out there on the tip of their own tongues
small women raised to be good and have never felt anything so mad

as to be beyond stress, beyond the corner of their bed, sitting with knees together
and feet strained straight down in shoes they bought for being so good

at a job somewhere held down by the tips of their tongues, saying little
who just want something better but nothing as concrete to them as the word

twenty feet tall and small as headphones
and are admired so by the driftwood people surrounding

and who are feted in conversations by men who knew them as classroom queens
now as utterly distant as state lines and unread messages

these women who toil in their own obscure hearts and know
that the way out is a secret code, an ordering of words and emphasis

and conjure them in dreams but awake forgetfully
unlike every goon they ever met or will meet

who dreams in passages of language technical as manuals
but awake in unearned poetry of self, and command of words, diction

so precise to be archers with quivers of marrow
and such small women, not born small but made, are married off to

their counterparts in reverse and then make whole worlds of bitten tongue
the bruised tip hidden in the nondescript patterns

alone and engulfed by a people who would think her well but not revel in any talent
she has yet to produce like a flaming sword before dried brush