Sandra Jones

Some things are best done quietly, 

because when announced it becomes performance,

as if the pleasure of the audience is what’s at stake. 

Applause would hinder the real work,

a delicate lace-making of a new shell,

a new membrane. 

Dropping a stitch would be disastrous. 

Your face would unravel when you open your mouth to speak. 

So, no, save the show for when it’s complete,

for when you don’t have to think anymore about showing it at all;

it just happens.

Rock the shivering ulcer

In a cat’s cradle,

till its whisper snores

breathe more sticky filaments

that time and air and ambition and antipathy

will harden into bone

The scabby crags of a wound

Will ease into opalescence, 

stretched like an open palm,

waiting to be read.

Some things are best done silently,

without the hold of fancy alone in the attic,

but a perspicacious fingering

like sliding around the rim of the glass

to sound in tune.

Hide until the nacre is formed

so the tender throat inside

coughed up its scratchy resentment

to echo between deep basement walls.

Some things are best done in broad daylight. 

How else could you see black thread on black fabric? 

Or different shades of black at that?

If you put the wrong ones together,

It just looks piecemeal. 

You want a smooth silhouette for a little black dress. 

When bright light screams the tocsin

to launch an army of monarch butterflies

then you have to start all over again, my dear,

because the line is ruined.

There’s too many spaces,

widening and fluttering,

and your face unravels again. 

Don’t you want to know how to keep your face from unraveling?

Some things are best done smiling. 

A wall of white teeth is your best protection

from the elements;

from eyes askance

and inopportune questions. 

Blink and grit your teeth sometimes

pull your cheeks to hold up

the loose ends of your face

that have no attachment, yet,

to the rest of the textile.   

Some things are best done while looking away

at the horizon or a spot upon the wall

like standing on the roof knowing the flood will pass.

Meeting eyes too soon could loosen a stitch

when you’ve done so much to make back up your face.

Some things are best done while dancing

to tighten the stitches that anchor your face

to its smooth lacquer cocoon

its iridescent hieratic signs

Now

an epic in a scar

pregnant with meaning

and new beginnings.