Published on: 6/14/2010
Golden Lilies

She was just a child when her mother
sliced the black and odoriferous
flesh from her feet, crack of broken
bones molded into crescent moons.

Now widowed and old,
her ragged lotus shoes barely shroud
the corpses of toes buried underfoot
still weeping the bloody sunset of a dead art.

The erotic tip of the big toe,
the arrow's bow of heel and sole.
These are the painful, ugly relics
her husband so admired.