Poem: A Lover's Recourse (habiliment)

habit / habiliment

A string of pearls? More like a ring of wooden beads.
These verses, smoothed by fingers, are rosary beads.

How many kisses have I threaded with his name!
I wear to bed my suitors pockets full of beads.

The costume green was awful. Obscene was the heat
till it broke like a string, and the rain fell like beads.

The tightest cell is loosened by the smallest entrance.
The boy brushes past the curtain of colored beads.

You have been asked to guess the weight of the pig.
The answer can be found in mummy’s jar of beads.

The beads are pearls in this one sense: they irritate
the flesh to cream with meaning all over the beads.

Love, what would you give Jee for all his ancestors?
A mirror? A religion? Give him seven beads.

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