Tik-Tok Poetess!
—try and stop drowning in her image,
hear what she is saying, while still seeing her
it’s hard, not to worry
for my own daughter, to hold
this flashing fish of almost-woman in my hands
(glistening lips, whetted words, fetchingly angled)
to give her this sea, this net, Oh!
she’s good enough
to make waves, surrounded
by waves already: dark locks
(coiled, framed, streaming)
the filtered moon of her face—
all the right pieces are clanging around inside her,
so loud and immediate, she shakes
(lure and hook) afraid of escaping
notice, see her struggle
to be ‘real,’ to be a ‘real girl,’
to be ‘better than a real girl,’ to create
her own reality, reel after reel
her cat-lined, doll-lashed eyes revealing
that deliberate, ‘I am now emoting,’ magic trick
so effective
with the kind of boys/girls that vanished you in High School—

the line and sinker between beauty and perversion
deep ends on so many factors,
consider the life-raft possibility of performance art…
some notion of ‘perfect’
(skin, hair, lighting, lips)
is reading me poetry, and I am gone
fishing–
               catch me?