For real: an impossible silk dress,
aged and unlarvaed.
And for the lady, a zinc compact,
which will open wide
into knowing.
For actual love, one must keep
the lips parted,
formally welcome
curls of breeze
to gums and teeth.
For beauty! sings the sun as it oranges
the bricks. Sings
the foraged carmine on the
red cheek's crown.
Fortune favors the gorgeous, so bless
this range of offerings. Help us
force the horseman's eye.
Chloe Bryan is a poet and editor living in Knoxville, TN. Her work has appeared in Cream City Review, Angel Food, and Burial Magazine, among others. She recently received an MFA from Hollins University. Read more at chloebryan.net. She would like to recommend "Sorry, Anne" by Sophia Tone from the archives.
My constraint is that each stanza begins, in some way, with "for." This pattern happened accidentally at first, but I realized while writing that it mirrored the poem's warped "gifts": the insects' stolen silk and carmine, humans who offer themselves up as beautified objects in the pursuit of fortune, safety, youth, love... so it stuck!
