she’s as quick as they’ll ever be

and the characters she portrays

for lizard skinned artist men

are hardly balanced

on the beach shell and desert sand

pedestals they create for her and

her arms are reaching and reaching until

baby, they can reach the boys dressed like

poets constructing verses about her leaf-like veins

and they see through the highs but not the

masks that super-glue-global-warming dry onto

her lily-like cheeks.

there’s a crab shell around her

butterfly heart

but she can’t shed the

exoskeleton

that has hardened to a crisp in the frying pan

city of chance

that really only feeds her

amphetamine

so that she forgets she is being poached-

the wire snares catch her

antelope legs and giraffe neck

and lion teeth and impala face

and cut so deep

that the images she goes to sleep with are of

her own splayed body

stuck on trees, still biting bait,

her throat who’s delicateness inspires poetry

is slit and black

and her knees are shot so

she can’t dance

and sometimes she even sees herself as

the fetus child animal wild girl

ripped from her mother

even before she was born.

impala girl never had a choice about being photographed.