Broken Art in Sarasota
by Katherine Shaeffer  

We wanted to lay out a blanket spread
with cheese sandwiches and fruit on the museum floor.
"No, children," they said.  

We packed away our picnic as the dead
baroque specters glared at our backs through the swaying door.
We wanted to lay out a blanket spread.  

Silken hair sleeping on a silk-smooth egg-domed forehead.
Under banyan roots, I bit a bowed mouth sensuous and pure.
"No, children," they said.  

He looked like an angel in my bed,
but he kissed me until my tongue grew sore.
We wanted to lay out a blanket spread  

on the concrete mattress that soaked red
as the flat black bay spread under us like a whore.
"No, children," they said.  

He said he'd only touch me if I bled
flat on my back in the black, then one moon more.
We wanted to lay out a blanket spread.
"No children," they said.

Katherine Shaeffer is a first year at New College . She plans to concentrate in literature/theatre and has been writing stories and poems for most of her life.