She Turned Her Back II

A continuation of the earlier 'She Turned Her Back,' deepening the rejection into images of fantasy, frozen loveliness, and lifeless hands that strangle what they once caressed.

A near-identical recasting of 'She Turned Her Back,' reproducing the same lines while quietly tightening the punctuation - the dashes after 'Devil dear-far away from here-' and the trailing equals signs give the page a more clipped, hyphenated breath. The mechanism is unchanged: the mind 'out of shape with reality' is 'pitching it out to...,' the speaker summons 'Fantasy' and names his desire 'Devil dear,' and 'Easyness is a caress' even as 'lifeless hands may effectively strangle.' What the numbered sequel adds is recurrence itself: the poem returns to the wound a second time and arrives at the same verdict, 'Loveliness begins to freeze,' now without the earlier version's dangling 'i.' - a fraction more finished, a fraction colder.