Women with secrets safe inside their bras. The bite of elastic leaves a fine pink impression. Decisions resting on the vaults of vulnerability and tensed tippy toes; women, women wash your delicate hands. Darken your speech with devilry, diabolist of the drab midwest. Peach petaled breath coupled with the indefinite curve of your jaw is astounding. I hoard a treasure of fascinating cuts on my thighs, Lichtenburg lines, a little less beautiful. There is something about a lotus flower unfurling in tea, and all the plastic beakers shrinking underground. Dump sites to beehives in two easy steps. A scratchy shadow; the dash of rain, this is speed drawing my movement. Pencils are hands on clocks, death is a chime. Where is the paradise I’ve been promised? ACROSS THE AMAZON? Well take me there. I am on fire in oregon, where love is best and the beaches spit birch, redwood, sequioa. I smell jasmine on the willows, girls with heads bent furrowing like pigs, it’s disgusting. My girl deserves more; roses on pillows of clouds and a diet of oranges, soleley. Who are we but Shoemenders? Quiltstichers? Dreamers? Here comes the night, swooning in through the window, loose and low on its haunches. Tomorrow is another day and no sin stays secret. Daughter, embroider these French flowers on the …. are you done yet with the painting? With tying your shoes? I want nothing but to hold you. Aha! The lake the tree the castle: we’re here. Do not feed the birds, please, sir. From the fifth tree along the lake shore I see him hanging. I must say i expected more, maybe you, pale and bleeding, staining the fur of that filthy white horse.
Our souls were clean back then.
You and I, baking cake and eating it. Taking turns to sleep and read in bed. Wet morning, moist afternoon, 3pm in drag. The day came late as usual, loosening our collars and apron strings with inimitable ease. The bed springs held promise, kinetic as the mystic mauve of sunrise bleeding into gold. We kicked our feet in embryonic fluid, wrestled with pearls inside the shells of black lipped oysters, fought over sea silk and the price of tyrian dye, that rare and regal hue which resists all weather simply to intensify with time. At high tide we would sit and sip pink juleps on the white-washed porch steps. Together we endured sunsets, cesarians, and there she was, an orange mess in our arms.
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He cried a lot that year.
A delicate aggression laced his fingers like gloves, especially detectable at dinner when breaking loaves or mouthing grace. With black rimmed nails he tore chunks of flesh from the crust, deep impressions of his fingers remained for minutes in the flattened sponge. With lowered eyes I sought solace in the warmth of the cat wrapped around my legs, recalled sanguine afternoons, star-spread on sun baked tarmac in June.
For six summers I labored at my grandpa’s turkey farm; pined for lost loves in fields of single, silvered trees and plucked each perfect feather from each perfect brown plume. In a heap of down I would lay, lazy as the Golden Oriole in the long honeyed days. Yellow shrouds blue as mothers watch their sons turn grey and slip like shadows, chased from the house by the five o’clock blaze. In private purgatory my mother scrapes plates, great conquerer of nothing, cordially accepting her fate under mountains of mash and fat carrots. Sacks of potatoes tell time, existing quietly in various states of bloom. The piano tuner announces himself with a tinkle of keys and we mourn the loss of the last off notes; the minor flats dressing down the arpeggios like desperate dew drops losing grip of their leaves. All this, at the table, in the loneliest air.
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Years later we met again (do you remember?) under the blasphemous tent, the stars, the Marquis, the Sade, the circus, the silverware, the floral ensemble, the Salmon en Croute, the small Yorkie under my arm. What did you think of me then, Matthew?
I can’t talk of moonlight, of moist hands or whimpering.
Now Lazarus appears in every poem
which is nothing but a dream to stop time briefly
Living takes up so much time.
Baudelaire with a bouquet tucked under his left breast pocket
in the cimetière du Montparnasse.
All I have is a baguette to fill the hours
and a hand-painted bedsheet
spurning the joys of capitalism.
There is nothing beautiful now that paper is
obsolete
but the trees can flourish in Russia, Herzegovina, Maldova
Good night, you beautiful woman.
My face in the frame, replaced.
Your hallway deserves something warmer,
Blue knickers on the wall, not lighting.
My cats licks milk skillfully, her dry tongue clicking, fur flat
like a smouldering runway. Run little me, little you,
all the same from different perspectives. A relative
shift in perception electrifies an evening;
juleps on the porch, gripping the balustrade for balance
under a handicapped sky.
do you remember when the days were young and we, necrotic in our skins like rotten potatoes, unearthed and parted from the worms swore we’d never leave, chased windows of sun in billowing dress, cheesecloth milky as an elephants breath. Today please, a tin of tomato soup and bread to dip, a river inside of my wellington boots.
we pick eagerly though sticks of liquorice
wishing we knew such delicate design
as the nose of a beautiful boy.
had i known or you known that we would be here
now, in the now
watching carefully each other’s face
incase at any moment mine might disappear,
worth less than gold to the roots of the cinnamon tree.
your face is a hole in the sky
your face is a tear in the fabric of being
your face is the answer to Sartre’s philosophical study of suicide
your face is no answer at all but I like the shadow your perfect
nose casts and the pallor of your cheeks in the blue-ish half-light of September.
He is in the corner wearing a ridiculous hat
We all rushed out to buy painted shirts, galoshes, skirts embellished with tropical fish.
The telephone wires in Haiti still swing though it must be windless now. My face warms the earth like Montana. May it be cooled in the pond outside? Kissing fishes cooly. Fringes part like seas after a few dry martinis and then the lady of the house starts singing. The everlasting scream left hanging, a lunch date? What does it mean when a single tear is shed on the thread bare stairs? Intentions of sanding and staining sweet threats on her breath.
The moon is rolling over like a perfect white cat
The ghosts of the fish rise, sparkling souls or winter mist making the pond shine like rhinestone in the teal air. Inside the purple knife has surfaced. The tiger lost a tail and your face fell down under the table, licking the floor like a snail.
The good life is not here.
The grass is blue like a desert, a trumpet, a violin, a shoe, a shelf, a birthday cake, a candle, a flower in the snow.
Bluets, no. 72; loneliness is solitude with a problem (she is chewing at the corners of papers peeling from my walls). I sat for Schiele as a child in a striped skirt on an upturned crate. He took me to a deserted bakery on the East side of town; gold light fell through the dusty windows and I sparkled amongst sacks of flour and satin rats. The red velvet cake case like a flattened tulip on the floor. In my room the small plastic horses trample a shelf, strung together in a line, hearts burning so bright their bodies melt. Poor creatures, unable to cope with the transatlantic voltage. Are things different across the sea? Do I detect doubt in Dorothy’s voice as she taps her heels together for the third time? Are mantras convincing? I wonder these things at night, as the peacock prays for the safe return of his tail feathers, that glimmering bundle I found in the bin out front. Yesterday, I dyed my hair orange like pine essence, to accompany the leaves in their seasonal makeover. My face is warm now; the mirror, the flame. I close my eyes and I’m back in Berlin; on my head, an old Russian hat. I dropped it once among fir trees, hibiscus. When I went back to retrieve it, the thing was half buried, ice forming on matted sections of claret fur. It reminded me of a felled rabbit, frozen in the snow. I return to my kitchen, frying fishcakes in face treatment oil.
