peacocks

i read about this glass house --
she lived in it and he watched.

except for a small trap door
where the man's eyes couldn't penetrate,
she lived exposed-

and in this house she had these peacocks
a showstopping brood - ultramarine and kelly green
dazzling legs on a chorus line -
tin rabbits on a racetrack leading the greyhounds on

she, making these cakes,
full of thick butter and fats,
daily humiliation of having to pee
in a glass gazebo

watched like a hawk.

bought and sold peacock payments
a hostage under a dome
commodity paintings and poems
commodity scales of compliance
on the harp he bought and installed


her legs sliced up like a pie
her art in a vase of fancy feathers
her body -- manipulated flesh dish
and a name like Muffin or Candy
or Cum-on Betty --

but at night the trap door opened
to the ocean and its asylum depths
unbounded imagination reef
a place immune to his obsession
mermen who openly wept
at a fish's death
wild seahorses with electric hearts
making sea anemone mushroom beats

secret sinkholes of moontime living

and one day she did not return -
and these peacocks and their prizes
and all the music of compliance
the supply and demand
of men's eyes - abandoned
a glass wasteland of defection
defied glass ghost town
of forget-my-face