Lynn of the Tender Locks and Lovers
Eileen Russell 


On Halloween she borrowed her roommate’s extra birth control pills
two weeks later, lost her virginity.
She was a mess.
It was a waterbed,
he, a musician.
In a Pre-Raphaelite crown
she was a tapestry weaver
raveling cerebral threads.
Daughter of a painter and lute maker,
got me hooked on Joni,
at the school assembly
with the dulcimer player,
her androgynous minstrel lover.
She afforded me silence over library tables.
In games of wit
her mirth spilled silvery…
a lyrical acknowledgment.

Two Years Later

A one-room in Gainesville,
he smirked at Venn diagrams she crafted for hours.
Guitar-fucker,
leaving her idle in the loft bed.
That boy has gone Californian:
tanned, taut and tripped.
Meanwhile, the psycho photographer
taking pictures of her chestnut mane;
in pools, wet.
Under sun, sheen.
Forty-six shots of strand
chased with breathy phone calls in the night.

Three Years Later

How she got strapped to an AWOL angel   
I’ll never know.    
She sloughed his suicides.
Mad poet, manic,     
motorcycle mechanic.    
He bloodied her sleeves for her care,
this girl with thigh-length hair.

  Four Years Later             
                                                                                          
2   Burdened by grocery sacks,                                                                              

a waylay on Capitol Hill.

Knife to the throat

faceless force at her back.

Later, she and her partner

provide forensics,

hair samples for comparison.

Police station forays and futile line-ups,

her first visit to the couch.

She’ll relinquish no control

from here on out.

 Five Years Later

A weekend jaunt home

spurs a radical shift.

She tells an old friend,

when I get off the plane

you’ll spot me, easy,

looking just like

I did in high school.

That was it, she vowed

and booked the nearest salon.

A lifetime of growth hit the floor.

The Victorian doll sheds her ornaments:

troubadour forfeited,

Easy Rider ditched,

her rapist purged.

All abandoned

for archaeology and law school.

Berkeley-bound and brilliant,

sleeping power in her womb;

her lovers, those circumventing webs

spun from her head,

long gone.