Dragonfly Tattoo
Dipping inks under my skin, he paints me at a window,
Raising blood from my arm relaxed across his lap.
An illustrated man changes me forever:
Guiding lines of pain for a portrait
Of fierce beauty, he gives my shoulder flight.
Now and then he looks up to catch the likeness
From the bestiary, and the corroborating
Look on my face: the delicate fatal lip.
"Yes, we've got her!" He lays down his needles.
Tempting a shared imagination to alight in the flesh
And tracing its trajectory
Turns two into one,
Tumbling the transformed, transforming pair
Over and over in the act
On wings of art.
Camp Scripps, 2004(?)