some comp. poem

I submitted this for Comp. Now I will submit it to yall. Look at that, I just realized I started it during a Write Club prompt.

Bridal Portrait

Gloved hands mar,
peel the pearled
bodice, not knowing
the hook & eye trick
of it - how pins stitch
the excess, mannequin
in a wedding dress,
its blue flesh sheen.
Make my daughter
an insensitive thing,
bark blushed to pretty
slip-pink & indifferent.
Give her the neglected
lilt of newswomen,
parade float carnations
left out in the rain,
I am only here
because I don't know
how to leave,
the plastic coverings
in the dry cleaner's,
pulsing prideful ghosts,
careening headstrong
around the same theme:
to watch a girl stare
indefinitely at a fixed point
until it haunts me, until
she traces a word on her thigh
like flood lines on aluminum
siding in Sea Bright, or any
fading laceration. She ran
into a spigot off the fire
hydrant and never found
her way home. Alone, wading
knee-deep in rain water. A man
kayaks in front of the 7-11,
a man makes it onto the news.