Pamela Murray Winters

Shake, Alabama

I want to be Brittany’s dress. I want her
to hold me to her breast as she shakes
and makes my fringes dance. If I could

dissolve on her like lacquer, run
through her like liquor, OK, but I’d
rather be her frock, a flour sack

or rayon shift with flowers. A kick
in the gut, wraiths tangling with
a wolf—you’d think these would be

the consequence of that voice, that mouth,
that whole body of song, but her shimmy
remakes it into joy. I don’t just want

to be filled with that flame; I want to
flaunt, to strut, to burn. I want the scale
to zip up my back and zing.

Pamela Murray Winters lives and works in Maryland. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Unbeckonable Bird, was published in June 2018 by FutureCycle Press.