You are a goblet of the warmest yellow,
smooth as new skin, half drunk with dew.

Like most beauties, unapproachable
well-versed in the cost of contact.

You’ve no patience for bold admirers
the daring, the curious, the thirsty

All are pain-punished instantly,
left a sticky lesson, somewhere tender

To touch you requires near-weightlessness,
sunlit certainty, a diadasia’s whorled descent.

You ask only what needs asking,
irrefutable purpose, a means to bear fruit.

Tova Feldmanstern is originally from New York City and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. A social worker by profession, she is currently pursuing a degree in music. Her poetry has been published in Gravitas and Aurora.