her tin skin

i want her tin skin. i want her militant barbie breast, resistant, cupped, no, cocked in the V of her elbow. i want my curves mountainous and locked. i want her arabesque eyes, i want her tar markings, her curlicues, i want her tin skin. she is a tree, her hair a forest of strength. i want to be adorned with bottles. i want my brownness to cover all but the silver edges of my tin skin. my sculptor should have made me like her round-bellied maker hewed her: with chain- saw in hand, roughly. cut away from me everything but the semblance of tender. let nothing but my flexed foot, toeing childhood, tell the night-eyed, who know how to look, what lies within. —after alison saar’s “compton nocturne”