My braids swim
with moat alligators
who love such tinsel
brushing their backs.
My beauty is mechanical,
a hairless clock or hairy
cabinet. My mood purples
in a stable. None dare
approach unless beastly,
chaliced, jewel groined.
I am processioned by rats,
we walk into a country
of men who eat live fish
and trees that sink down
into the soil at night.
Queen wants me look
back at her from the cloth.
I’d rather eat my own rag.
My mind is wet, I touch it.
Taisia Kitaiskaia’s poems have appeared in journals such as Pleiades, jubilat, Guernica, Gulf Coast, and Fence. She is the recipient of a Michener Center for Writers fellowship, oracle for Ask Baba Yaga, and the author of Literary Witches, forthcoming from Hachette/Seal in Fall 2017.