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Lines for a Little Old Lady

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Your hat was a banquet:
an explosion
of fronds, plumes and flowers,
neatly trapped in a net.

Tensely furred
in your dilapidated fox,
you twitched beneath
the agitated foliage.

Every time you relaxed
your teeth burst
from their hiding place
like ripe fruit.

Life was a tight-lipped
undertaking.

First published in Workshop New Poetry.